New perspective on Indian diaspora
THE 1860 Heritage Museum will commemorate the centenary since the abolition of indenture with an inaugural symposium on Saturday aimed at reflecting on the impact of the British-led system.
Less than two weeks later, the country will mark the 157th anniversary of the arrival of indentured Indian labourers on board the Truro. Indenture heritage, indenture and democracy, and new perspectives on the Indian diaspora are among the topics that will be highlighted by high profile academics.
The keynote addresses will be delivered Dr Dilip M Menon, the Mellon chair of Indian studies and director of the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of Witwatersrand, and Dr Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, a leading scholar in the field of India-South Africa connected histories and deputy dean of the faculty of art at the University of Western Cape.
Ashwin Desai, Rajend Mesthrie, Devi Rajab, Brij Maharaj, Gabisile Mkhize, Pratab Kumar, Nalini Moodley-Diar, Sylvia Garib, Stanley Ehiane, Kiren Thathia, Betty Govinden, Kalpana Hiralal and Sheetal Bhoola will deliver academic papers on varying topics.
Menon said his keynote speech was titled “Discovery of the Peasant: Indenture and the Agrarian Turn in Indian Nationalism”.
Speaking briefly on the topic, he said: “In the 1920s, the Indian National Congress (INC) moved away from an elite politics of widening Indian participation in colonial administration towards an engagement with the peasantry and the agrarian question.
“At the heart of this agrarian turn were two contending figures, whose careers had been closely associated with indenture – MK Gandhi in South Africa and Shridhar Balwant Jodhpurkar, known as Baba Ramchandra, who had been an indentured labourer in Fiji.
“On his return to India, Gandhi continued to invoke the idea of imperial citizenship and the duties of the British Empire in his early campaigns in Champaran and Kheda.
“Baba Ramchandra, on the other hand, invoked a religious idiom and local traditions in launching a hugely successful peasant agitation in the United Provinces (UP) between 1919 and 1921.
“His charismatic and millenarian style of politics emerged as a threat to the secular style and hierarchical organisation of the Congress. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi worked to subdue and co-opt the peasant movement in UP and de-legitimise the maverick authority of Baba Ramchandra.
“I argue that Gandhi discovered the power of the religious idiom in mass mobilisation through this encounter, even as he went on to create his own distinctive idiom.
“Both of these figures were crucial to the reorientation of the Congress towards rural organisation, given their experience of working with labour unlike the largely professional leadership of the INC.
“This lecture is an initial foray into giving the histories of indenture a central place in the writing of modern Indian history, rather than seeing it as external to the formation of the Indian nation.”
Award-winning writer, Dr Rajab, said she hoped the symposium would help open conversation and educate the general public on Indian heritage and the different aspects of our past.
“The general South African population know little about each other. A symposium of this nature is therefore significant in sharing the history of a people, who are in the minority in South Africa.”
Her speech is entitled “From Pots to Politics: SA Indian Women in the Struggle” and deals with the contribution of Indian women in the country.
“The year 1917 marks the end of indenture proclaimed by the Viceroy of India a century ago and finds us struggling with its aftermath. Little is known about this period in the lives of our ancestors.
“Who were we, as a people, outside a stereotype? Today we are labelled as the people of the Guptas, rich capitalists involved in state capture.
“But history reveals another face and this is why it is so important to clear fact from fiction. The contribution of South African Indians in the struggle against apartheid is not widely known in contemporary South Africa, particularly among the youth.
“Even less recognised is their role in the Indian resistance movements as they fought alongside their men to change the course of history. As women did not play a formal role in the Indian political organisations, at least until the late 1930s, their presence in history books and in collective memories remains noticeably absent,” she said.
Speaking on indentured labourers, symposium convener, Selvan Naidoo, of the 1860 Heritage Museum, said the system enforced by the British Empire in the 19th century resulted in the displacement of around 3.5 million Indians to various British colonies from British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago to Jamaica, Mauritius and South Africa, among others.
“This year marks 100 years since the Viceroy of India, in 1917, announced that: ‘No native of India shall depart by sea out of British India for the purpose of, or with the intention of labouring for hire in any country beyond the limits of India.’
“This momentous proclamation has and continues to have a bearing on the lives of all those that were affected by the system of indenture. Throughout all the colonies, commemorations to mark this centenary have become an exercise of reflection that has been honoured in various forms.”
He said indenture, like slavery to this country and to others, continued to shape the history and psyche of peoples – if not their material reality.
“It is worth reflecting, in these early decades of the 21st century on the impact and legacy of indenture from different vantage points and its political, social and cultural significance both locally and globally.”
He said the symposium would therefore seek to provide critical consideration to the significance of the important milestone in the Indian collective history.
“We envisage that the presentations will, in due course, be collated into a published book that is sorely needed in a neglected part of our post-apartheid research on marginalised communities.”
The symposium on Saturday runs from 8am until 4pm at the 1860 Heritage Museum at Derby Street and is free and open to the public.