Who is ‘We’? Remastering Indian Indenture as Collective Memory

Farzana Gounder

Abstract

Applied linguistics as a field of study draws upon linguistics for analysing language; however, it takes the analysis further by drawing on other disciplines to recontextualize the data in order to seek an understanding of how discourses shape who we are. To this end, the study presents the intersection of linguistics with cultural studies (Hall, 1997), history (Ali, 1980; 2004; Lal, 2000; 2004a; 2004b; Naidu, 2004), and narrative analysis (Bamberg, 2004; 2005; Gee, 1991) to address issues around language, identity and power (Fairclough, 1995; Foucault, 1971; 1972; Said, 1978), within a culturally constituted space (Hauser, 1999). The study analyses the form and function of a Fiji Hindi master narrative about the founding members of the Fiji Indian community, performed in the public sphere of a radio documentary. The narrative creates a convenient beginning for the listeners, and works towards renegotiating the membership categorization of ‘us’ and ‘them’ thereby reconceptualising the pan Fiji Indian identity as an internal community construct rather than an outside imposition. The study exemplifies that the construction of a narrative at the macro-level is equally relevant for investigation as life narrative constructions, the current focus of many applied linguistic studies.

Introduction

To be a speech community, members must have shared conceptual maps about how the world

is and should be (Hall, 1997:18). Moreover, members must dialogize these worldviews into

meaningful existence (Foucault, 1972:32). A speech community’s culturally produced

master narratives (Bamberg, 2005), which consist of generalizations, beliefs and

suppositions, form the ideological frame within which we negotiate our (un)sanctioned

individual life narratives. These threads of master narratives hold together the tapestry of

culture. Hence, the normative discourses of the master narratives become our textile

yardstick by which to measure what is and is not culturally acceptable in any given social

discourse (Bamberg, 2004:360).

While a life narrative is ultimately about the negotiation of ‘who am I ?’ through the

character positions of ‘me’ (Bamberg, 2004), the master narrative is a more encompassing

discourse involving the construction of ‘us’ through narratives about ‘who were we?’, in light

of ‘who are we?’ and ‘who do we want to be?’ The discourse of the master narrative

provides a ‘dialogizing intersection’ to discuss and debate those incidents that provide a

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communal ‘web of significant meanings, of common actions, celebrations and feelings’

(Hauser, 1999:69). Such political discourse generally takes place in the rhetorical public

sphere (p.64):

A discursive space in which strangers discuss issues they perceive to be of

consequence for them and their group. Its rhetorical exchanges are the

bases for shared awareness of common issues, shared interests, tendencies

of extent and strength of difference and agreement, and self-constitution as

a public whose opinions bear on the organizations of society.

Radio provides such a space for negotiating who can be included in the discursive ‘we’ (cf.

Fairclough, 1995:35-52). It is through publicly shared pasts that a community builds its

‘cultural memory’, without which the community and its members would cease to share

common bonds (Hauser, 1999:114).

To achieve this function of demarcating ‘us’ from ‘them’, master narratives impose

generalizations, simplify complexities, and collapse differences (cf. Foucault, 1971:8). In

this manner, they legitimate power relations and cultural knowledge, creating ‘the very reality

that they appear to describe’ (Said, 1978:94).

Although master narratives maintain their authoritative position because a large

proportion of the speech community subscribes to them, these shared discourses are

concurrently a site for contestation and reinvention, constantly seeking to redefine who we

are. Moreover, at any given moment, there is more than one master narrative in operation.

These master narratives may form counter-narratives to each other on certain focuses

(Bamberg, 2004; Hauser, 1999:117). Which master narrative is upheld and becomes the

(current) dominant narrative is dependent on the point of view of the speaker, and what s/he

wants to emphasize. This negotiation by its very subject has to be ongoing as interpretations

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differ by persons, places and moments. Furthermore, the negotiation matters to us, as

members of the speech community, because we have a vested interest in the outcome.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The data is first presented

almost devoid of any contextual information, forcing us to concentrate on the narrative’s

form. The discussion then presents the speech community, the role of the radio in the

community, and the importance of the radio documentary in which the narrative occurs.

Finally, the narrative is re-situated within its cultural context, where the function of the

narrative as a master narrative is discussed.

The data

Tej Ram Prem’s narrative was produced as an introduction to the documentary Girmit Gāthā

or ‘Stories of indenture’. The program was first broadcast in 1979 on Radio Fiji 2, which at

the time was the only Hindi radio station in Fiji (Usher & Leonard, 1979:25). Girmit Gāthā

played at 8:30pm on Tuesday nights and focussed on the life narratives of Indians, who,

between 1879 and 1916, had voyaged from Colonial India to Fiji, mainly to work on

sugarcane plantations as indentured labourers (cf. Ali, 2004; Gillion, 1962; Lal, 2000; 2004a;

2004b; Naidu, 2004 on Indian indenture; Gounder, 2011 on the Girmit Gāthā life narratives).

Prem’s narrative, which precedes the labourers’ narratives, retraces the historical

circumstances that brought Indians to Fiji.

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Method

Given that this is a highly fluent preconstructed1 narrative told over the airwaves by an

experienced radio announcer, it becomes important to analyse the manner of telling. To this

end, I have employed a three-way translation2. The Fiji Hindi is on the left with a

corresponding syntactic gloss and the translation is on the right. Moreover, using Jefferson’s

(2004) transcriptional notation, I marked for intonation (high ↑, low ↓), stress (word),

acceleration (>word<), deceleration (<word>), pause (.), and inbreath (.h) on the original

language.

To make the transcribed narrative more manageable for analysis, I implemented Gee’s

(1991) poetic structural approach. Gee places emphasis not only on what is said (lexical

choices), but also how it is said (intonation, stress, pause). Although Gee’s approach has, to

my knowledge, so far been applied only to narratives produced or translated into English (cf.

Ohlen, 2003; Riessman, 2008), I have here applied his approach to Fiji Hindi, as it is difficult

to closely represent prosodic features and poetic segments in a translation. Furthermore, the

use of intonation appeared to fit Gee’s demarcation of the transcript into poetic segments, as

explained below.

Idea Unit is the smallest prosodic phrase. It contains a single focus made up of one

piece of new information, signalled by pitch glide. In Prem’s narrative, there is a slight pause

marking the end of one Idea Unit and the beginning of the next. In addition, Prem uses a

change in intonation to signal the end of an Idea Unit. To illustrate, the Idea Units have been

bracketed in the following sentence:

Line (das oktobar athārā so chouhatar On 10th October 1874 Fiji’s chiefs

1 Because of the context in which it was produced, the narrative is most probably read aloud, which would explain the marked absence of disfluencies, such as repairs, hesitations and false starts. 2 See Gounder, 2011:47-66 for detailed discussion on my transcriptional approach.

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1 ↑me) (.h)

ten October eighteen hundred seventy.four LOC

(fījī ke samanto ↑ne)

Fiji POSS lord.PL

(↓deš ko britan ko ↓samartit ↓kar ↓diya) (.)

country Britain ownership do PST

ceded the country over to Britain

The first Idea Unit ends with a higher intonation on the locative and is followed by an

inbreath. Similarly, the second Idea Unit ends with a higher intonation, followed by a slight

pause. The final Idea Unit, however, has a falling intonation and ends with a pause, a typical

pattern for Prem in marking the end of his Lines.

One or more Idea Units around a central argument form a Line. Each Line consists of

a new piece of information while concurrently carrying forward old information. In Line 1

above, we begin with the date (1874). This is followed by the introduction of the major

characters for that timeframe (Fiji’s chiefs) and what they did that year (ceded Fiji to Britain).

This example illustrates that the presence of old information builds coherence (Linde, 1993)

across the narrative while the new information provides reportability (Labov, 1997), a reason

to continue listening to the unfolding narrative. This balance between coherence and

reportability not only exists within a Line but also between Lines.

A group of Lines adjacent to each other with similar ideas form a Stanza. These are

large argument units, which have one theme, and no internal change of place, time or major

characters. In the transcript, Line 1 is in a separate Stanza from Lines 2-4 because the

timeframe and the protagonists are different for the two Stanzas. In Line 1, the event takes

place in 1874, while the events in Lines 2-4 occur in 1875. Line 1 focuses on the actions of

Fiji’s chiefs, while Lines 2-4 are about the effect of the measles epidemic on the indigenous

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Fijians. Moreover, the use of a pause as well as a marked change in intonation pattern at the

beginning of Line 2 signals the movement between the two themes.

The combination of Stanzas, often as related pairs around a central theme, is termed

Strophe. Strophe 1 focuses on the reasons for implementing indenture in Fiji while Strophe 2

is about the application of indenture in Fiji. The penultimate Strophe (Strophe 3), presents

the cultural ideologies about indenture while the final Strophe (Strophe 4) draws parallels

between the actions of the Indian labourers and that of the listeners.

Finally, the largest section, Part, is a combination of Strophes to form the story as a

whole. Strophes 1 and 2 belong to the same Part (Part 1) as together they provide an

overview of Indian indenture in Fiji. Strophes 3 and 4 are in Parts of their own as they have

different focuses from those in Part 1 and also from each other.

This poetic representation is a reminder that the text we are analysing is a re-

presentation of an oral narrative and that the telling of this narrative is an interactive process

between the narrator and a wider unseen audience, an important aspect for this study.

A major drawback of Gee’s method of narrative parsing is that it is quite laborious to

identify the beginnings and ends of Lines and Stanzas, and is, therefore, challenging to

implement with longer narratives (Elliott, 2005:56). However, Prem’s narrative is relatively

short at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, which made it possible to apply Gee’s method to the

whole narrative. Moreover, because Prem’s narrative lacks disfluencies and is not a multiple

teller narrative I did not have to worry about these aspects of narration (however see Elliott,

2005:54-56; Mishler, 1997; 1999; Riessman, 2008:93-103).

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Analysis

The narrative is in three Parts. Part 1 establishes a causal relationship for the implementation

of indenture in Fiji. Part 2 discusses the emotive connotations associated with the term

‘indenture’. Finally, Part 3 acts as a coda by linking the protagonists’ actions to that of the

listeners, thereby emphasizing the relevance of the narrative, and the documentary, for these

listeners (cf. Labov, 1972 on coda). In this section, I begin by discussing the organization of

the narrative before moving on to the analysis of discourse features (analepsis, anaphoric

reference, parallelism, synonyms and collocations) that were important for the study’s focus.

Part 1

Through the chunking of the narrative into Strophes, a causal relationship becomes evident in

this section of Prem’s overview. As can be seen on the transcript, I have attempted to

emphasize this causality through the headings given to the Strophes and Stanzas.

Prem combines salient and habitual incidents to explain how Indians arrived in Fiji.

He sees the causal chain as being triggered by two separate, yet interrelated events: the

ceding of Fiji to Great Britain in 1874 and the introduction of measles to Fiji in 1875 by a

visiting British warship. The two events are interrelated in that if Fiji had not been ceded to

Great Britain, the warship would probably not have been in Fiji waters, and therefore, the

epidemic may not have occurred, or at least, may not have had the same consequence for the

60,000 Indian labourers. The other salient events (for Prem’s theme) are the arrival of Fiji’s

first indenture ship in 1879 and the abolishment of Indian indenture in 1920. In addition to

these one-off events are those habitual incidents that occurred over time, such as the drop in

the Fijian’s population as well as the regular shiploads of Indians arriving in Fiji.

Through temporal and thematic linkage (Fig.1), the timeline in Prem’s narrative

becomes evident:

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Figure 1: causal chain for Part 1

The dates impose temporality; however, this is suspended by the background

information on Sir Arthur Gordon provided in Stanza 3. As Gordon was the Governor-

General of Mauritius from 1871 to 1874, the attributed knowledge is in analepsis and

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predates even the first date in the narrative. We need to question what effect the placement of

this information has in an otherwise chronological narrative. Mauritius was the first colony

to introduce Indian indenture in 1834. Gordon, having been Governor of Mauritius prior to

becoming Fiji’s Governor, is therefore attributed with first-hand knowledge about the Indian

indenture system. This knowledge and his recommendation for the implementation of Indian

indenture in Fiji also lend credibility to Prem’s assertion in Line 6 that Indians are

hardworking and courageous.

The cohesion of Part 1 can be seen in its Strophe structure. Stanzas 2 and 3 in

Strophe 1 are each devoted to one of the factors behind the implementation of Indian

indenture: Stanza 2 focuses on the effects of the measles outbreak while Stanza 3 focuses on

the Governor-General and his actions. Strophe 2 presents the convergence of the two factors

in the form of the arrival of the first shipload of Indian labourers and marks the beginning of

38 years of indentured arrivals to Fiji3.

Other than Stanza 1, a single Line that sets the stage for the rest of the Stanzas in Part

1, the final Line in each Stanza acts as a coda, which explains the relevance of the Stanza to

the theme of indenture:

Stanza 2: And on the Europeans’ plantations the number of labourers suddenly dropped

significantly

Stanza 3: With the use of this term [agreement], how easily they [the Indians] could be

brought to Fiji

3 While the abolishment of indenture did not occur until 1920, the transportation of labourers ended in 1916.

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Stanza 4: Sir Arthur Gordon gave his blessings to the indenture system the result of which

was seen in 1879, when on the ship Leonidas, the first Indians, who were labourers, were

dropped off in Fiji

Stanza 5: After serving five years of indenture, the majority of Indians stayed back in Fiji

Furthermore, as seen above, the final Line in Part 1 indicates that Part 1 also serves as

an explanation for the establishment of the Fiji Indian community. However, elaboration on

this theme is suspended until the final Part (Part 3) of the narrative.

Part 2

In Part 2, the structure of the narrative changes from enchaining incidents to

contrastive listing, as can be gauged from the headings of Stanzas in Strophe 3. When seen

as a set, the items in Stanza 6 depict a bleak outlook on indenture, one that is filled with great

suffering. Hence, the theme of Stanza 6 could be ‘the hardship of indenture’. The list

itemises the effects of suffering this hardship, and moves from psychological to physical

effects4, with the final item ‘death’ marking the ultimate effect. The tone in Stanza 7 is in

sharp contrast to the inagentive tone of the previous Stanza. Stanza 7 portrays an image of

immense achievement, with the ultimate outcome being ‘victory’. Hence, the Stanza’s theme

could be ‘triumph over adversity’.

The Stanzas have parallel structure, and can be likened to poetic verse. For this

purpose, I have listed the two Stanzas next to each other first in Fiji Hindi and then in

English. As the translation cannot do justice to the Strophe’s structure, I analyse the Stanzas

in the original language.

4 piɽā ‘pain’ is ambiguous as it could mean either physical or psychological pain. However, when considering the preceding and following words, both of which refer to emotional upheavals, piɽā in this context is taken to mean psychological pain.

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Stanza 6 Stanza 7

ja↑hā girm↑it ka prayam↑bik ithi↑hāswhere indenture POSS origin historyšram yātn↑āshame tormentpiɽ↑āpainklešanguishās↑u:tearsbimārīillnessour moutand deathkī ithihās hePOSS history be.PROG

↑wahīREFLEXsaŋ↑aršbattlesaŋ↑kalpdeterminationtir niš↑checourage

ou vijeand victoryka ↑bhī ithihās he(.)POSS too history be.PROG

In indenture’s origins wherethe torment of shamepainanguishtearsillnessand deathis history

In that same originfightdeterminationcourage

and victoryis also history

As seen from the excerpt above, the pattern of the two Stanzas is:

Stanza 6

jahā girmit ka prayambik ithihāswhere indenture POSS origin history

List with [negative] connotations

kī ithihās hePOSS history be.PROG

Stanza 7

wahīREFLEX

List with [positive] connotations

ka ↑bhī ithihās he (.)POSS too history be.PROG

Stanza 7 continues the structure of Stanza 6; however, rather than repeating the

words that marked the beginning of Stanza 6, in Stanza 7, the anaphoric reference marker

wahī is used to indicate the maintenance of this structure. Similarly, Stanza 7 ends with the

repetition of the final units in Stanza 6, but with the insertion of bhī, which through the

associated high intonation and stress harks back to Stanza 6. By referring back to Stanza 6,

both through anaphoric reference and lexical repetition, cohesion is maintained between the

two Stanzas and they are also bound together (as Strophe 3) from the rest of the narrative.

Stanza 7 ends with a pause, missing from the end of Stanza 6, thereby indicating

the end of the verse form of Strophe 3. While Part 2 presents an image of indenture through

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the contrasting descriptors in the two Stanzas, there is no mention of the labourers. They are

the focus of Part 3, the final section of the narrative.

Part 3

As discussed above, Stanza 6 focuses on the negative aspects of indenture while Stanza 7 has

a more positive outlook. When Part 2 is seen in relation to Part 3, the reason for this ordering

becomes clear. The positive connotations in the final Stanza of Part 2 flow into the first

Stanza of Part 3, thereby maintaining cohesion between the two Parts.

The use of parallelism and lists, both of which were seen in Part 2, continue into Part

3. However, unlike Part 2 where parallelism was in terms of the structure of the Stanzas, and

lists were to contrast affective connotations associated with indenture, in Part 3 the

parallelism is thematic and the aim is to show similarities between the positive actions of the

labourers and those of the listeners:

Stanza 8

hamāre ↑purwajo ko1ST.POSS forebear POSSmahin↑at masakat(.h)hard.workunkī kurbānī ↑se(.h)3RD.REM.POSS sacrifice LOCjeise fījī des abād ↑huālike Fiji country fruitful happen.PERF

Stanza 9weise hīREFLEX be.PROGunko santān ↑bhī(.h)3RD.REM.POSS descendents toodeš ko ↑ājcountry POSS todaypragati our vikāš kī orimprovement and progress OBJ towardsle jā rahī ↑he(.)COP.PERF take go be.PROG

Stanza 8

Our forebears’hard workand sacrificeshave made Fiji fruitful

Stanza 9

In that same waytheir descendants tooare today taking the country forwardstoward development and progress

While structural parallelism may be absent from Part 3, contrasts between Stanzas and

anaphoric reference are present. The two Stanzas can be contrasted in terms of focal

characters and time frame. In Stanza 7, Prem uses the phrase ‘our forebears’ whereas Stanza

8 is about ‘their descendants’. Moreover, Stanza 7 is set in the past (have made) while Stanza

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8 is moving from the present into the future (today taking the country forwards towards). To

avoid repetition of lexical items from Stanza 7, and to indicate the similarities between the

themes of both Stanzas, there is heavy use of anaphoric reference in Stanza 8. The Stanza

begins with ‘In that same way’, to refer to the ‘hard work and sacrifices’ in Stanza 7. There

is also the use of the third person possessive pronoun ‘their’ to refer to the labourers, and ‘the

country’ to refer to Fiji. Through these contrasts and anaphoric references, the two Stanzas

are sequenced together.

The suspended theme of Part 1, the establishment of the Fiji Indian community, is

extended and elaborated upon in Part 3. The linkage between ‘our forebears’ and ‘their

descendants’, is made explicit in this final Part of the narrative. That these descendants are

the current radio listeners is indicated by a shift in tense from past to present. Hence, Part 3

acts as an overall narrative coda by explaining to the listeners how this overview is relevant

for them.

Discussion

In this final section, the study recontextualizes the narrative. By locating the formation of the

narrative in its cultural context and discursive sphere, the study discusses how the narrative

functions as a master narrative in reconceptualising ‘who we are’.

The speech community

In the 1970s, when the narrative was constructed, Fiji Indians comprised almost fifty percent

of Fiji’s population. The Fiji Indian pan-ethnic label does not, however, equate to

homogeneity. In the 1970s, almost a hundred years after the first Indian labourers arrived in

Fiji, their descendants were beginning to fracture along both the sub-ethnic divide of North

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and South Indian, and also along the religious lines of Hindu and Muslim, with further

schisms arising within each religion (Ali, 1980:107-129; Kelly, 1991). These tensions

manifested themselves in rumoured explanations of the outcome of the 1972 elections.

At this time, Indians were becoming vocal in their quest for a national and political

identity. That year, for the first time in Fiji’s history, the Indian-representative National

Federation Party (NFP), led by Siddiq Koya, won the elections; however, as NFP discovered,

winning the election did not necessarily equate to ruling the country. Instead the Governor-

General reappointed the incumbent Ratu Mara as Prime Minister. While the actions of the

Governor-General and Ratu Mara are debateable (cf. Ali, 1980:192-219; Lal, 2010:158-160)

that is not part of this study’s focus. What is important is that the post-election events leading

up to the swearing in of the Prime Minister brought the divisions within the NFP into sharp

relief. The sub-ethnic and religious strife from earlier in the decade were again brought to the

fore with murmurings that dominant Hindu NFP members had secretly contacted the

Governor-General and informed him of their unwillingness to support Koya, a South Indian

Muslim. Although these allegations remain unverified, the fact that they were made illustrate

the divisions simmering in the Fiji Indian psyche at the time Prem was constructing his

narrative for public broadcast.

The radio

At the time of the narrative’s initial broadcast, the only forms of media in Fiji were radio and

newspaper. Other than the introduction of television in October 1991, not much has changed.

The three English newspapers (Fiji Times, Daily Post and Fiji Sun) are only produced once a

day while those in Fijian (Nai Lalakai) and Hindi (Shanti Dut and Sartaj), the ‘vernaculars’,

of the two major ethnic communities, Fijians and Fiji Indians respectively, are produced

weekly. In addition to their limited publication, the newspapers do not reach the more

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isolated communities in the islands until a few days later because of transportation.

Furthermore, the ability to read, particularly amongst the older generation in rural areas, is

not very high. The radio, therefore, plays an important role in maintaining the speech

community’s links within itself as well as with the rest of Fiji (cf. Mangubhai & Mugler,

2003:370-1). Hence, the content of the radio programs as well as the manner in which

opinions are expressed and allowed to be heard on the airwaves set the standard and

simultaneously represent the community’s interests.

Girmit Gāthā, the documentary in which Prem’s narrative occurs, was produced as

part of the centenary events to mark Fiji’s indenture beginnings, and was listened to with

great interest by the speech community. The near non-existence of indentured photos, letters,

and other memorabilia brought a realization that an historical era was slipping away and that

we needed to hear from the handful of labourers remaining before it became too late. Hence,

Girmit Gāthā, the collection of these labourers’ oral narratives, is a crucial cornerstone of the

community’s cultural memory of indenture.

The community’s interest in understanding what had brought their forebears to Fiji

ultimately lay in negotiating a cultural identity for Indians born in Fiji. This was a hybrid

identity (Bhabha, 1994), a fusion of the cultures and languages of the country of origin of

their great-grandparents and that of the Fiji Indians’ own place of origin, thereby carrying a

double consciousness (Du Bois, 2009) summed up in the label ‘Fiji Indian’.

Moreover, at this time, Fiji Indians were becoming a prominent fixture in Fiji, as

evidenced in their increased numbers, political representation, as well as the establishment of

Indian schools and religious institutions. Furthermore, various landmarks were beginning to

bear Fiji Indian names. Hence, at the time of the interviews, Fiji Indians were able to reflect

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on their progress from ‘unschooled’ labourers to ‘educated’ landowners. The broadcast of the

program, therefore, coincided with the interest of the speech community in its history.

The indenture centenary was a literary event with Indian and Fiji Indian poets

expressing their point of view, or the Hindi translation of the viewpoint of other prominent

Fiji Indians, who had written in English. The poems, which were also broadcast on Radio

Fiji 2, were on the themes of the shameful legacy of Indian indenture; the duplicity practiced

by the colonial authorities and the recruiters in getting Indians to Fiji; the naivety of the

Indians in agreeing to become indentured; and the immense hardship suffered by the

labourers at the hands of the plantation authorities. These viewpoints of distinguished

members of the community, who, like Prem, focussed on describing the labourers in

collective terms, represented and also re-presented the viewpoints of the Fiji Indian

community. In his narrative, Prem takes this interrelated discourse around the theme ‘we are

one’ and continues it, providing a ‘new’ perspective, which then enables the discussion to be

carried on by the listeners, gaining significance for individuals (cf. Hauser, 1999:66).

The narrative contextualized

The narrative creates a convenient beginning for the radio listeners, as it represents and re-

presents (cf. Fairclough, 1995) the founding members of the community. The narrative

draws on the commonality of shared memories and language as well as the common heritage

of the listeners to unify them as ‘one people’ (cf. Fairclough, 1995:106-109; Hall, 1992:296).

In doing so, it reconceptualises and reappropriates the pan-ethnic identity of the listeners as

an internal community construct.

Prem stresses the construction of the collective ‘we’ as a hybrid identity. He does so

by emphasizing ‘our’ collective Indian and indenture inheritance, through both his terms of

reference for the labourers, and ‘our’ current status as Fiji citizens. Furthermore, unlike the

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academic discourses on indenture, Prem’s narrative does not distinguish for gender (Lal,

2000), sub-ethnicity (Naidu, 2004) and religion (Ali, 1980), three major markers for sub-

categorization in the Fiji Indian community.

In the narrative, Prem mentions the labourers six times. However, he does not call

them Girmitya, the term the labourers coined to refer to themselves, and which is commonly

used in the Fiji Indian community. Instead, Prem’s preferred term is Bharatye masdur

(which occurs four times) and literally means ‘Indian labourer’. The term emphasizes the

commonality of India as the labourers’ place of origin, and simultaneously de-emphasizes the

fact that the labourers came from different Indian regions.

The other two times that he refers to the labourers, Prem uses the term Purwajo

meaning ‘forebears’. As he uses this latter term infrequently, we need to consider the context

in which it occurs. The first is as part of a relative clause within the analepsis in Stanza 2,

Line 3. The second is in Stanza 7. Both times the term occurs within a set phrase ‘our

forebears’. Through the use of the first person inclusive, Prem aligns himself with the radio

listeners and emphasizes his ingroup membership, while also establishing the participant role

of the targeted addressee. Through the emphasis on the shared indenture experiences of ‘our’

forebears, the narrative works to promote a national Fiji Indian culture (Hall, 1992:293).

The predominant viewpoint of the day, that the indentured labourers were the victims

of an unjust and brutal system, can be traced in Prem’s positionings of the protagonists. The

collective body of labourers are presented inagentively throughout the narrative until they are

‘free’. Moreover, the labourers are not given a voice; rather, Prem speaks on their behalf.

This has the double reading of the labourers being puppets at the hands of the indenture

authorities, who manipulated the labourers to their own advantage. However, the final

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positioning of the labourers indicates that although they may have been brought to Fiji, the

choice to remain in Fiji after indenture was theirs.

Despite the stress on common origin, the spatial frame of India is marked by its

absence, bringing the double consciousness of a hybrid identity, always present, to the fore.

The narrative is firmly set in Fiji, signifying a distancing from India, both physically and

emotionally. There is no mention of the recruitment process, the wait in the Indian depot for

the ship, or even the voyage to Fiji. The first ship ‘materializes’ in Fiji waters. The focus on

Fiji and the lack of focus on India holds a cautionary note for the Fiji Indian community of

the time of the need to let go of the skirts of Bharat Mata, or ‘Mother India’, and to start

seeing Fiji and not India as the foundation of Fiji Indian history. The spatial frame also

reinforces my earlier statement that indenture marks a convenient beginning for the

community.

Finally, to ground the narrative as a construct ‘about us’, the narrative emphasizes

continuity of shared worldviews over the generations (Gadamer, 1975:264), bridging,

through parallelism, the efforts of the labourers and those of the listeners, their descendants,

in the betterment of Fiji. Hence, the attributes raised are taken to be symbolic of the Indian

practice from the inception, inculcating cultural values and norms into what it means to be

‘Fiji Indian’.

Conclusion

The study exemplifies how applied linguistics focuses on contextual intersections to explore

how we construct and are (re)constructed through discourse. It is by drawing on the

community’s collective memory to (re)tell the story of indenture within the public sphere of

the radio, and to (re)present indenture both as the shared experience of ‘our’ forebears as well

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as a convenient beginning of the speech community that Prem’s narrative demonstrates its

power as a normative discourse in determining who can be included in the discursive ‘we’

and can therefore be considered a master narrative. Importantly, just as Prem’s narrative is

one interpretation of the historical narrative of indenture, it is possible to have counter-

readings of his narrative when seen from other points of intersections. By continuing this

discussion through further studies, we acknowledge the multi-layered web of influence

discourse has in constructing society.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mrs. Anderson (International Pacific College) for sourcing materials; Professor White (Massey

University) for emailed discussions on applied linguistics; and Mr. Morshed for discussions on translation.

Transcript

Part 1: Why indenture was introduced to Fiji

Strophe 1: Factors behind implementation

Stanza 1: The beginning

Line 1

das oktobar athārā so chouhatar ↑me(.h)

ten October eighteen hundred seventy.four LOC

fījī ke samanto ↑ne

Fiji POSS lord.PL

↓deš ko britan ko ↓samartit ↓kar ↓diya(.)

country Britain ownership do PST

On 10th October 1874, Fiji’s chiefs ceded the country over to Britain

Stanza 2: Measles epidemic

Line 2

↑athāra sou pachhatar me In 1875, that is, one year later, an English battleship brought a measles epidemic to

19

eighteen hundred seventy.five LOC

yane ek sāl ↑bād

that.is one year later

ek aŋrezi larāku ja↑hāz

one English fighter ship

fījī me chechak kī mahamārī le āi↓yā(.)

Fiji LOC measles POSS killer bring come.PERF

Fiji

Line 3

is bim↑ārī ↑se

this illness LOC

fij↑iāns ke sankhīā gir ↓kar

Fijians POSS mass fall do

ek tih↑āī ho ↑gei(.h)

one third happen go.PERF

From this epidemic the Fijian’s population dropped to one third

Line 4

↓our goro ko khe:↑to par

and Englishman.PL POSS field.PL LOC

kām karne wāle masduro ko sankh↑iyo(.h)

work do.IP MOD labourer.PL POSS number.PL

↓achānak

suddenly

edam kam ho ↓gei(.)

EMPH less happen go.PERF

And on the Europeans’ plantations the number of labourers suddenly dropped significantly

Stanza 3: Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon

Line 5

↑us ↑wakt

that time

fijī ke gav↑nā

Fiji POSS Governor

se ↑ātha hemil↑tan god↑an

Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon

maurišas ↑ke ↑bhī gavnar re chukhe ↓the

Mauritius POSS too Governor AUX.PST remain.IP PST

At that time Fiji’s Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon had also been the Governor of Mauritius

Line 6

tathā

that.is

That is, the Indian labourers’ courage and hard work was very familiar to him

20

bhārtīe mazduro ki himat our kaɽī mehnat ↑se

Indian labourer.PL POSS courage and hard labour LOC

khub achhī tarā parach↑it bhī ↑the: (.)

plenty good manner familiar too PST

Line 7

un↑he ↑ye ↑bhī patā ↑thā

3RD.REM this too knowledge PST

kī bhartiye mazduro ↑ko

that Indian labourer.PL OBJ

šart↑bandī

promise.bind

yāne ↑agrimant

in.other.words agreement

jise ham↑āre pur↑wajo ↑ne

which 1ST.POSS forebear.PL TRANS.PERF

↑girmit ke nām se

indenture POSS name LOC

↑amar kar diyā ↑he

immortal do give.PERF be.PROG

He also knew that the Indian labourers by contract, in other words, ‘agreement’ , which our forebears by the name of ‘Girmit’ have immortalized

Line 8

nāmak parthā ke ↑tahak

bearing.the.name.of reason OBJ means

↑kitne āsāni se

how.much easy LOC

laiyā jā saktā ↓he(.)

bring.PERF go can.PERF be.PROG

With the use of this term, how easily they could be brought to Fiji

Strophe 2: Indian indenture in Fiji

Stanza 4: Beginnings of indenture era

Line 9 ↑goro ko ārthik stithī

Englishman.PL POSS dire situation

sudhārne ke ↑liye

fix.TRANS.PERF POSS reason.IP

To resolve the Europeans’ dire situation,

Line 10

unko kheto me

3RD REM POSS field.PL LOC

mazdur pradhān karne ke

To provide labourers on their plantations,

21

↑liye(.h)

labourer present do.TRANS.PERF POSS reason.IP

Line 11

se ot↑hā godan ↑ne

Sir Arthur Gordon TRANS.PERF

girmit ka širī ganeš ↓kiyā

indenture OBJ blessing do.PERF

jiske phal sar↑up

whose fruit result.of

↑athārā sou nawāsī ↑me

eighteen hundred seventy.nine LOC

yāne

in.other.words

eitīn sevantī nain ↑me(.h)

eighteen seventy nine LOC

lioni↑dās jahāz se

Leonidas ship LOC

prathām bhartiye

first Indian.PL

mazdur dal

labour type

↓fījī ↓utārā ↓geyā(.)

Fiji unload.PERF go.PERF

Sir Arthur Gordon gave his blessings to the indenture system, the result of which was seen in 1879 when on the ship Leonidas, the first Indians, who were labourers, were dropped off in Fiji

Stanza 5: End of indenture era

Line 12 girm↑it prath↑ā

indenture era

unīs sou solā me band ↑huī

nineteen hundred twenty LOC end happen.PST

The indenture era ended in 1920

Line 13 tathā

that.is

↑artīs war↑šo ↑me

thirty.eight year.PL LOC

thetī eit waršo ↑me(.h)

thirty.eight year.PL LOC

That is in thirty eight years, approximately sixty one thousand contract bound labourers were brought to Fiji

22

lagbh↑ag sikstī wan thouz↑and

approximately sixty one thousand

eksat hazār bhārtiye

sixty.one thousand Indian.PL

šart bandī mazd↑ur(.h)

promise bound labourer

↓fijī lā ↓giye(.h)

Fiji bring go.IP

Line 14 tathā

that.is

pāch sāl ka girmit

five year POSS indenture

↑kāt ↑kar(.h)

cut do

adhikanch bharti↑ye

majority Indian.PL

fijī me ↑hī reh ↓giye(.)

Fiji LOC EMPH remain go.IP

That is after serving five years of indenture, the majority of Indians stayed back in Fiji

Part 2: The history of indenture

Strophe 3: Reflections

Stanza 6: Negative aspects

Line 15 ja↑hā girm↑it ka prayam↑bik ithi↑hāswhere indenture POSS origin historyšram yātn↑āshame tormentpi↑ɽāpainklešanguishā↑su:tearsbimārīillnessour moutand deathkī ithihās hePOSS history be.PROG

In indenture’s origins wherethe torment of shamepainanguishtearsillnessand deathis history

Stanza 7: Positive aspects

Line 16 ↑wahīREFLEXsaŋ↑aršbattlesaŋ↑kalp

In that same originfightdeterminationcourageand victory

23

determinationdhiɽ niš↑checourageou vijeand victoryka ↑bhī ithihās he(.)POSS too history be.PROG

is also part of that history

Part 3: The labourers and us

Strophe 4: Bridging then and now

Stanza 8: Extolling the virtues of the labourers

Line 17 hamāre ↑purwajo ko1ST.POSS forebear POSSmahin↑at masakat(.h)hard.workunkī kurbānī ↑se(.h)3RD.REM.POSS sacrifice LOCjeise fījī deš abād ↑huālike Fiji country fruitful happen.PERF

Our forebears’hard workand sacrificeshave made Fiji fruitful

Stanza 9: Extolling the virtues of Fiji Indian

Line 18 weise hīREFLEX be.PROGunko santān ↑bhī(.h)3RD.REM.POSS descendents toodeš ko ↑ājcountry POSS todaypragati our vikāš kī orimprovement and progress OBJ towardsle jā rahī ↑he(.)COP.PERF take go be.PROG

In that same waytheir descendants tooare today taking the country forwardstoward development and progress

24

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