Indentured Identities

The book explores the historical dimension of Indian indenture from within the lived experience of laborers, who emigrated to Fiji from colonial India a century ago. As these laborers are no longer alive, one could argue that the experience of indenture is no longer accessible, if there had not been recordings of the laborers life narratives. It is seven of these audio recordings, made for public broadcast, which form the data for a fine-grained language-analysis to unearth the life-world of indenture. Through the merging of Labov s high-point analysis with Bamberg s positioning analysis, the book focuses on the situated discursive performativity of identities, and draws attention to the complex and at times conflicting positions within the life narratives. Sorting through those positions resulted in the ultimate challenge to the essentially homogenizing current master narrative discourse on who can be classified as an indentured laborer, and what signifies as an indenture experience."

The book explores the historical dimension of Indian indenture from within the lived experience of laborers, who emigrated to Fiji from colonial India a century ago. As these laborers are no longer alive, one could argue that the experience of indenture is no longer accessible, if there had not been recordings of the laborers’ life narratives. It is seven of these audio recordings, made for public broadcast, which form the data for a fine-grained language-analysis to unearth the life-world of indenture. Through the merging of Labov’s high-point analysis with Bamberg’s positioning analysis, the book focuses on the situated discursive performativity of identities, and draws attention to the complex and at times conflicting positions within the life narratives. Sorting through those positions resulted in the ultimate challenge to the essentially homogenizing current master narrative discourse on who can be classified as an indentured laborer, and what signifies as an indenture experience.

This is the fourth publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, Present and Future, which was organised in June 2013 by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname. The core of the book is based on a conference panel which focused specifically on the experience of Muslim with indentured migrants and their descendants. This is a significant contribution since the focus of most studies on Indian indenture has been almost exclusively on Hindu religion and culture, even though an estimated seventeen percent of migrants were Muslims. This book thus fills an important gap in the indentured historiography, both to understand that past as well as to make sense of the present, when Muslim identities are undergoing rapid changes in response to both local and global realities. The book includes a chapter on the experiences of Muslim indentured immigrants of Indonesian descent who settled in Suriname. The core questions in the study are as follows: What role did Islam play in the lives of (Indian) Muslim migrants in their new settings during indenture and in the post-indenture period? How did Islam help migrants adapt and acculturate to their new environment? What have been the similarities and differences in practices, traditions and beliefs between Muslim communities in the different countries and between them and the country of origin? How have Islamic practices and Muslim identities transformed over time? What role does Islam play in the Muslims’ lives in these countries in the contemporary period? In order to respond to these questions, this book examines the historic place of Islam in migrants’ place of origin and provides a series of case studies that focus on the various countries to which the indentured Indians migrated, such as Mauritius, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and Fiji, to understand the institutionalisation of Islam in these settings and the actual lived experience of Muslims which is culturally and historically specific, bound by the circumstances of individuals’ location in time and space. The chapters in this volume also provide a snapshot of the diversity and similarity of lived Muslim experiences.

This book describes the processes of migration and settlement of indentured Indian women and tries to map their struggles, challenges and agencies. It highlights the fact that even though indentured women faced various kinds of violence and abuse owing to the authoritarian and patriarchal setup of the plantations, over a period of time, they managed to turn the adverse circumstances to their advantage. They struggled to emerge as productive workforces and empowered themselves through acquiring education and skill, and negotiating new spaces and identities for themselves. At the same time, they also raised families in often inhospitable circumstances, passing on to their descendants, a strong foundation to build successful lives for themselves.The book discusses indentured women from a multidisciplinary perspective and adopts multiple methodologies, including primary and secondary sources, personal narrations, pictorial representations and theoretical discussions. It also provides an overview of the current discourses and the changing paradigms of the studies on Indian indentured women. Further, it presents a detailed, region-wise description of indentured women migrants. The regions covered in this book are Asia- Pacific (countries covered are Fiji, Burma and Nepal); Africa (countries covered are South Africa, Mauritius and Reunion Island); and the Caribbean (countries covered are Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago). In addition, one full section of the book is devoted to the theoretical frameworks that touch upon gender performativity, normative misogyny, Bahadur's Coolie Women, literary representations and resistance movements. It is intended for academics and researches in the field of diaspora/migration/transnational studies, history, sociology, literature, women/gender studies, as well as policymakers and general readers interested in the personal experiences of women and migrants.

This book offers a comprehensive account of indentured Chinese labour in the Dutch East Indies between 1880 and 1942, particularly in its twilight years after 1917. The author shows that Chinese indenture started and evolved differently from other forms of bonded labour in Southeast Asia and globally, including its Indian and Javanese variants. This difference is reflected in its lexicon, which was in part special to the Chinese strain. Using fieldwork findings from the tin islands of Bangka and Belitung and the Deli plantations on Sumatra as well as archival materials in Dutch, Chinese, and other languages held in libraries in Java, Nanjing, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Leiden, this book presents cutting-edge research that sets out to contribute to the revising of our historical understanding of indenture.

Comprising of more than twenty five percent of the world’s known languages, the Pacific is considered to be the most linguistically diverse region in the world. What unifies the region is the culture of storytelling, which provides a fundamental means for perpetuating cultural knowledge across generations. The volume brings together linguists, literary theorists, anthropologists and historians to explore the Pacific peoples’ constructions of identities through narrative. Chapters are organized under three themes: fine grained analysis at the storyworld level, the interactional context of narrative telling, and finally, the interconnections between narrative and cultural memory. The volume reflects the Pacific region’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, with discussions on the narrativization patterns in Australian and New Zealand English, Palmerston Island and Pitkern-Norfl’k English, Fiji Hindi, Hawaiian, Samoan, Solomon Island Pidgin, the Australian Aboriginal languages Jaminjung and Kriol, the Micronesian languages Mortlockese and Guam Chamorros, and the Vanuatuan languages Auluan, Neverver and Sa.

This is the fourth publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, Present and Future, which was organised in June 2013 by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname. The core of the book is based on a conference panel which focused specifically on the experience of Muslim with indentured migrants and their descendants. This is a significant contribution since the focus of most studies on Indian indenture has been almost exclusively on Hindu religion and culture, even though an estimated seventeen percent of migrants were Muslims. This book thus fills an important gap in the indentured historiography, both to understand that past as well as to make sense of the present, when Muslim identities are undergoing rapid changes in response to both local and global realities. The book includes a chapter on the experiences of Muslim indentured immigrants of Indonesian descent who settled in Suriname. The core questions in the study are as follows: What role did Islam play in the lives of (Indian) Muslim migrants in their new settings during indenture and in the post-indenture period? How did Islam help migrants adapt and acculturate to their new environment? What have been the similarities and differences in practices, traditions and beliefs between Muslim communities in the different countries and between them and the country of origin? How have Islamic practices and Muslim identities transformed over time? What role does Islam play in the Muslims’ lives in these countries in the contemporary period? In order to respond to these questions, this book examines the historic place of Islam in migrants’ place of origin and provides a series of case studies that focus on the various countries to which the indentured Indians migrated, such as Mauritius, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and Fiji, to understand the institutionalisation of Islam in these settings and the actual lived experience of Muslims which is culturally and historically specific, bound by the circumstances of individuals’ location in time and space. The chapters in this volume also provide a snapshot of the diversity and similarity of lived Muslim experiences.

This book is the first publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, Present and Future, which was organised in June 2013, by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname.