Table Of ContentMv| Twenty-Orie Vc^rs
m the T\\\ Istawfcs
The Story of the V\om>itct> Lmo
by
Totaram Sanadhya
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Public.Resource.Org
https://archive.org/details/mytwentyoneyearsOOtota
Fiji
Museum
K\y Twenty-One Veavrs in the
Fiji Istanfcs
&
The Story of tV»c H*untet> Line
Mvj Twenty-One Vc^rs m the
Fiji 1s1,Mit>s
&
The Storvj of the ftavm tct> Lmc
by Totaram Sanadhya
translated and edited by
John Dunham Kelly
&
Uttra Kumari Singh
First published by the Fiji Museum in 1991
This edition designed by Stephanie Hornett
Printed by Quality Print Limited, Suva
Copyright 2003
ISBN 982 208 003 4
ii
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Notes on Translators vii
• ♦
Notes on Translation
Vll
Introduction to My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands 1
The Book and its Authors 1
How to Read this Book 7
Girmit Reality as Described in My 21 Years 14
The Accuracy of the Arguments 25
Who Should Read this Book ? 30
My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands 34
The Fiji Islands 41
Assignment to Different Estates 42
Conditions on the Estates 43
Outrages (atyachar) Against the Kabuli Pathans 44
Hard Labour 46
Disgust for Black People 51
Outrages (atyachar) of the Merchants 53
Two Hundred Indians Were Cheated ! 54
Marriage Laws in Fiji 55
White Barristers and Lawyers 56
White Barrister Digested 1,925 Pounds 57
The Calling of a Barrister Prom India 58
The Piji Islands 63
Piji’s Original Inhabitants 65
iii
An Account of the Life of the Indians Dwelling in Fiji 69
The Opinion of Some Unbiased People 79
Government Organization 89
Agriculture and Trade 90
The Immigration Department 91
The Appointment of a Commission 93
My Own RarmStory 97
The Medical Examination on the Plantation 101
Touring Australia 109
How Can it be Necessary for Indians to Come to Fiji Now ? 112
Travel to My Own Country 113
Conclusion 118
The Opinion of Dinbandhu Andrews about the Coolie System 122
What is the Duty of the Government ? 126
Introduction to The Story of the Haunted Line 128
The Story of the Haunted Line 133
Appendix: Fiji Indians and the Law, 1912 148
A. Criminal Law and Life in the Lines 148
B. Civil Law - Indians and Europeans ‘Civil Society’ 172
C. Indians in Civil Court 185
D. Indian Perceptions of the Courts and Government 201
Addenda 206
IV
Illustrations
Photographs
1. Totaram’s Emigration Pass x
2. Indian Farmer’s Cottage 216
3. Indian Girls 217
4. Bazaar in the Coolie Lines 218
5. Religious Festival 219
6. Work on a Banana Plantation 220
7. Working in the Sugar Cane Fields 221
Tables
1. Supreme Court Criminal Cases 149
2. Death Penalties 150
3. Prosecutions of Indians for Violent Crimes 151
4. Patterns of Prosecution over Time 151
Acknowledgements
2003
With grateful thanks to Jone Naucabalavu of the Fiji Museum and
volunteer Bryan Hornett for painstakingly retyping the text.
1991
Permission for the publications of these translations was granted in
1984 by Benarsidas Chaturvedi. We thank him and remember him, and
hope that its publication will make his thoughts more available to a
new generation in Fiji. For permission to conduct the archival research
connected with this project, we thank the National Archives (Setareki T.
Tuinaceva, Archivist), and, for help and advice in that research, we thank
Margaret Patel of the Archives staff. For providing the Hindi manuscript
which we have translated as The Story of the Haunted Line, we thank
Surendra Prasad of Lautoka.
vi
"Notes on tlie Translators
Uttra Kumari Singh and John Dunham Kelly worked on the translation of
this book, and John Kelly undertook the background research in 1984 and
1985, when Kelly was a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University
of Chicago, pursuing his doctoral research on IndoTijian history and
culture. He received his Ph.D. in 1988 for a dissertation entitled Bhakhti
and the Spirit of Capitalism in Fiji. He now teaches anthropology at
Princeton University.
A Hindi teacher by profession, Mrs. Uttra Singh has taught for the United
States Peace Corps, for Catholic priests and nuns, and in secondary
schools, most recently Dudley High School. She was a copywriter at
Radio Fiji and has contributed articles to Shanti Dut. In 1985 she studied
in India, receiving a Diploma in Hindi from the Central Institute of Hindi,
New Delhi.
Notes OH IrAmlAtiOH
We have tried to follow the original texts as closely as possible, and have
made no additions or deletions from the manuscripts we translated.
For My Twenty^One Years in the Fiji Islands we translated the fourth
edition, published by Benarsidas Chaturvedi himself in 1973. We have
not seen the earlier editions but are told by other scholars that the text is
unchanged. For The Story of the Haunted Line, we translated from a typed
devanagari manuscript, graciously provided by Mr. Surendra Prasad of
Lautoka. Permission for the publications of both these translations was
granted by Benarsidas Chaturvedi.
Certain particular problems in translation deserve further comments.
First, Hindi writing often contains far fewer explicit paragraph breaks
than an EnglisUreading audience is accustomed to. Thus, especially
within The Story of the Haunted Line, we have added paragraph
breaks where we thought it appropriate. Hindi syntax also allows for
very long sentences which rarely but occasionally we were forced to
break. In general, we tried to save them as sentence units, sometimes
vii
straining English syntax in the process. On one occasion in My 21 Years,
we reorganized the sentences in a paragraph, because an organization
which read well in Hindi was confusing when rendered into English. All
chapter and section headings are arranged as in the original.
Next, there is the matter of idiomatic expressions. These we also tried to
save, whenever they made sense in English - for instance, ‘there wasn’t
even space on the street for a sesame seed’ on the occasion of Manilals
arrival. However, we occasionally judged an idiom to be obscure or
misleading in English, and substituted another phrasing for it. For
instance, rather than ‘To teach about religion is a very crooked rice'
pudding’, we entered, ‘To teach about religion is a very difficult thing’.
Next, there is the matter of Hindi words retained in the text. Hindi
words which have gained a life of their own in English discourse in
Fiji, for instance, ghee and dal, we retained. We also retained a special
set of words which have gained notoriety and special significance in
discussions about indenture history - girmit, arkati, sardar (indenture
contract, recruiter, work boss). Other Hindi words of special cultural
significance, for instance, sadhu and sidha, are both noted and translated
in the text. Whenever necessary explanatory footnotes have been
provided. All numbered footnotes are translators’ additions; the note
marked by an asterisk in The Story of the Haunted Line is an important
part of the original story.
The original Hindidanguage in My 21 Years also included many quotations
in English, e.g. from writings of J.W. Burton and Hannah Dudley. Except
for the quotations from C.F. Andrews, these were not translated into
Hindi, but were quoted in English. Occasionally, errors in syntax and
punctuation are found in these quoted passages, which may not have
existed in the originals. We have reproduced these passages as they
originally appeared in My 21 Years.
