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Reviews Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians. By Brij V. Lai. The Journal of Pacific History (Canberra), VIII, (1983), 152 pp. Index, appendices, maps, tables, illus., notes. Price: Aust. $9.75. THIS M ONOGRAPH, based on Brij Lai's doctoral thesis, examines the background of Fiji's girmitiyas (the indentured labourers who signed an agreement or girmit). The study makes several important contributions to Fijian, Pacific and Indian history. For Fijian history it provides a detailed analysis of the social and economic background of a major sector of the nation's population. More significantly Lai has made a real attempt to correct the derogatory image of the indentured Indian migrants in Fiji, and to restore dignity to the descendants of the girmitiyas, who too often have been ashamed of their past. Nevertheless, the approach is neither sentimental nor superficial but rather based upon solid quantitative evidence. In this respect the study makes another major contribution, particularly to the development of Pacific history. Few historians in this field have explored the possibilities of handling copious amounts of data through the use of a computer. While much of Lai's discussion does turn to documentary evidence and occasionally oral evidence, such as folk tales, the bulk of his investigation involved the analysis of 45,439 emigration passes of girmitiyas from Northern India. The author has attempted to revise the view espoused by Hugh Tinker and others that Indians were helpless victims of a 'new system of slavery'. Lai (p.129) does not deny that there were instances of deception and abuse against the migrants but stresses that: 'Seen in the context of the nineteenth century and of other types of labour migration from other countries such as China, it has to be admitted that tragic and sensational as the cases of deception in Indian migration were, there was nothing really exceptional about them.' By tracing through some of the important steps in the recruitment process and placing it in the socioeconomic context of that time he smashes a number of myths which are still swallowed by many people both within and outside Fiji today. The same critical revision has been applied in his excellent chapters covering women and families. Some of the myths that have been carefully examined and revised surround the role of the arkatis or recruiters who have long been held up, both in popular and academic testimony, as the evil men responsible for duping gullible Indian peasants. Lai (p.24) chooses to emphasise wider socio-economic forces behind emigration and also notes that the arkatis were probably afraid of entering villages for fear of being attacked by the servants of the zamindars. He found few cases of fraud instigated by the arkatis and suggests that there was little need for forcible recruitment. During years of scarcity and famine large numbers of peasants were especially prone to seek some alternative means of livelihood. Con82 REVIEWS 83 siderable detail is given of the plight which small landholders, petty cultivators, landless labourers and artisans faced as a result of economic hardship due to changes in land ownership, land fragmentation, the lack of rural credit, revenue and rent demands, and the decline of many traditional industries. These were only some of the consequences of the 'ultimate subordination of the economic interests of India to those of Britain' (p.74). Thus it is of little surprise that, due to the pervasiveness of economic disruption in northern India during this period, the girmitiyas, according to Lai's evidence, originated from a cross-section of rural northern Indian society. This is a definite blow to the negative stereotype of the low-caste background of the girmitiyas . Because all strata of Indian society were adversely affected by British economic and political penetration it meant that not only lower but also higher castes frequently sought employment outside their home regions and in nontraditional occupations. A further widely-held image is that these migrants suffered immediate and irreparable cultural disruption once they left India. It is refreshing to read a appraisal which, while suggesting that there was not an abrupt disintegration of cultural values, points to the positive aspects of the forging of a new life which cut...

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