Although a version of this article has appeared in an earlier issue (Indian Newslink, August 15, 2007), it is appropriate to mark India’s Independence Day (August 15) by revisiting those thoughts.
I take this opportunity to congratulate my ‘Grand Motherland’, which is the Motherland of my late grandfather Bansi, from Rajasthan, India.
I am a third generation Indo-Fijian, displaced from India when my grandfather was torn and tricked from his roots by British in 1915 to slave in Fiji to fill their coffers.
During her visit to Fiji, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told Indo-Fijians that Fiji was their country to which they should have allegiance, loyalty and love.
However, to what extent have the descendants of indentured labourers been made to feel that Fiji is their home? At the drop of a hat, the nationalist elements got ready to ship us back to India, because despite passage of time (130 years), Indo-Fijians were still regarded as ‘vulagis’ (visitors) in a country where they and their parents were born.
The axis of evil that resulted in modified version of slavery (called indenture or ‘Girmit’) ran from Britain, India and Australia.
India ignores
The Indian Government cannot wash its hands off its forgotten children in a land where they are still treated like slaves. While free settlers and Gujarati businessmen give a semblance and façade of rich Indo-Fijians in Fiji, a majority of descendents of Girmitiyas still lives below the poverty line, and persecuted by racist Fijian regimes.
When this abuse of democracy was taking place, the Australian and New Zealand Governments were sleeping. They woke up when Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama removed (on December 5, 2006) a supposedly democratic regime to implant a fairer system deliver social justice.
India should pay more attention to its forgotten grandchildren in Fiji by effecting transfer of technology and enabling them to establish cottage industries, which can thrive without much land. This would help the descendants of Girmitiyas, who are landless to stop serving indenture of poverty after three generations in a racist democracy.
When Fiji’s deposed Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase visited India in mid-2000, he failed to learn from Indian hospitality.
Bollywood lesson
There was one very important lesson for Fiji’s former Prime Minister and his group from the Indian visit. India is the only country where no Fijian Prime Minister would be able to sell the ‘Indigenous Race Card’ to justify Fijian nationalism, racism, and exclusive political control of the country. This is because India practices all-inclusiveness that was missing from Qarase’s Fiji.
In Bollywood movie Namaste (Greetings) London, the hero makes Britons understand India. “We come from a nation where we allow a Catholic woman [Sonia Gandhi] to step aside for a Sikh [Manmohan Singh] to be sworn in as the Prime Minister by a Muslim President [Dr Abdul Kalam] to govern a nation with over 80% Hindus.”
He said English language borrowed several expressions from Sanskrit, the world’s oldest language. Among them are matr (mother), bhrata (brother), jamity (geometry) and trikonmity (trigonometry).
“English is spoken and read more widely in India than in England. We have 5600 newspapers, 35,000 magazines and 21 major languages with combined readership of 120 million, much more than in England. We have the third largest pool of doctors, scientists and engineers and the third largest army in the world,” he said.
As part of the Indian Diaspora, I am proud to say that we Indo-Fijians, despite being separated by at least four generations, are still as much, if not more Indian as our ancestors were in India.
Thakur Ranjit Singh is a third generation Indo- Fijian born in Ba, Fiji. He now lives in Auckland. Email: thakurji@xtra.co.nz
