Book reveals ‘unique history’
Conditions were tough and inhospitable for Kandasami Naiken and his partner, Thanji, who were forced to flee their village of Navalpore, India, in 1881. They signed on as indentured labourers, arriving at the former Port of Durban in 1882
AN EXTENDED former Clairwood family, who have traced their roots to a village in Tamil Nadu, India, will launch their family history book at a function at the Enchanted Gardens Conference Centre, at the former Durban International Airport, on April 28. The descendants of indentured labourers Kandasami Naiken and his partner, Thanji, who arrived at the former Port of Durban in 1882, have put together a historical book, titled Flight of Young Lovers. Their ancestors were forced to flee their village of Navalpore in the former North Arcott District of Tamil Nadu in late 1881 after their elders discovered that Thanji was expecting a baby out of wedlock. North Arcott has now been split into districts known as Tiruvannamalai and Vellore. After they escaped and reached Madras (now Chennai), the couple were told that a ship would be leaving for the former British Natal Colony with indentured labourers recruited to work on the sugar plantations near the Port of Durban. The couple discussed the matter and reached a decision that “wherever this place Natal Colony is, it will be a far safer place than Madras”. Their families belonged to a warrior tribe and they feared that they would be tracked down and killed. Naiken and Thanji then signed on as indentured labourers. They boarded the ship, SS Mars, along with other indentured labourers in December 1881. They arrived at the Port of Durban at the end of January 1882. Naiken and his wife were recruited to work at the Blackburn Sugar Estate, near Mount Edgecombe, about 20km north of Durban. On the first night of their arrival at the sugar estate they had to sleep in a barn reserved for horses. The next day, the couple had to build their own hut with sticks, reeds and mud.
The conditions were tough and inhospitable, but despite the hardships, their first child, Muniamma, conceived in Navalpore, was born a few months after their arrival.
A year later their second child, Yellammah, was born – in the sugar cane field while Thanji was out working with other indentured women.
The Naikens completed their first five-year grimmit (indenture) in 1887 and thereafter signed a new contract for another five years.
After completing 10 years on the sugar estate, the Naikens were recruited by a white family to move to Ladysmith.
Here the young family were not only caught up in the Anglo-Boer War, but their two daughters nearly lost their lives when they were washed down a flooded river.
An African man passing by noticed the girls in trouble. He jumped into the fast-flowing waters without thinking about his own safety, and saved them.
If it was not for this unknown man, the descendants of Naiken and Thanji, who number more than 500 over six generations, would not be around today.
In view of the dangerous war conditions, their white employers advised the Naikens to move to Durban where there were “many Indian families”.
The book, thereafter, narrates the settlement of the Naikens and their children in Dayal Road, Clairwood, after at first trying to eke out a livelihood in the Congella area of Durban; the marriage of the two girls at the young age of 15; the death of Thanji; and the return of Naiken to Tamil Nadu in the early 1920s when he could not accept the death of his wife.
The sisters chose to remain with their families in Natal instead of returning to India.
Muniamma and her husband, Coopoosamy, had 14 children – 11 survived to give birth to the third, fourth, fifth and sixth generations.
Yellammah did not have any children. Muniamma was kind enough to allow one of her daughters to be raised by her.
The book also relates, in the words of some of the six sons and five daughters of Muniamma, their struggles while they toiled as market gardeners in Dayal Road.
It also recounts the life of one son who left home after his father and one elder brother disowned him for converting to Christianity at the age of 17. The father and brother asked him: “Why are you bringing a white man’s God to our home?”
All the 11 children began their married lives from Dayal Road. But after the area was affected by industrial development in the 1950s, they moved to different areas including Merebank, Chatsworth, Isipingo, Port Shepstone, Ottawa on the North Coast, Pietermariztburg and Dundee.
Muniamma’s family have no photographs of their ancestors except one picture taken when Naiken returned to Tamil Nadu in the 1920s.
The second-generation descendants say the picture was kept at the home in Dayal Road, but was lost when they all moved out.
The only time they heard anything of their father was in the late 1920s when they received a letter from someone in Tamil Nadu that he had passed on.
Thereafter, all their connections to the land of their parents were completely broken.
Today, only two of the 11 siblings, Savundalay Padacyhee, 91, of Dundee, and Amoy Moodley, 83, of Chatsworth, are around, and one sister-inlaw, Soundler Govender, 81, of Chatsworth.
While most of the third-generation descendants worked in and around Durban as machinists in clothing factories, clerks and some as building contractors, a few became teachers.
Most of the fourth-generation descendants have excelled educationally, with two graduating as medical doctors and one an advocate.
Most of the fourth generation have moved to Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town, and some have moved to England, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
One second-generation son, Soobramoney Govender, who spent most of his life in Isipingo, and several third- and fourth-generation descendants, had participated in the struggle against white minority rule and domination, as trade unionists and political activists. One third-generation descendant, who grew up in Ottawa and who worked in the neighbouring sugar cane fields in his school holidays, was banned, placed under house arrest, detained and denied his passport for 10 years in the early 1980s.
After Nelson Mandela was released from life imprisonment and the ANC and other movements were unbanned in February 1990, two descendants visited Navalpore in March of that year.
But there they were informed by elders that the families of their ancestors would have broken all contacts with the young couple because of their impropriety in falling in love and conceiving a baby out of wedlock.
Although the descendants have no family connections in Tamil Nadu, they are proud of their ancestry, their languages, and their rich cultures and traditions.
Their book was initiated, written and published mainly to ensure that the future generations would “not forget their roots, will know who they are and they will be certain about their future”.
The extended Muniamma family members are exhorted in the book to follow the words of advice by the Fijian author, Rajendra Prasad, who in his book, Tears of Paradise, wrote about the lives of the people who were recruited to work as indentured labourers in Fiji.
He wrote: “No community can grow in the ignorance of its past, as it is a legacy that must nourish successive generations. Any generation that terminates this legacy will be guilty of failing in its duties and obligations to their children. Our early history cannot be delinked.”
A third-generation descendant, Logan Govender, who was born in Isipingo, wrote the foreword for the book.
Govender, who works for the Save the Children NGO in Pretoria, encouraged his fellow descendants not to be discouraged by the social and economic challenges and “insecurities of belonging to a minority ethnic group”.
He wrote: “Rather than adopting a traditionalist ‘minority fear syndrome’, I believe that given our unique history in South Africa and the contributions we have all made, no matter how big or small, towards building a non-racial and democratic country, we owe it to those that will remain long after we have gone, to think positively about our future.”
The book launch will be attended by more than 160 descendants from KwaZulu-Natal, Johannesburg and Pretoria.