Khatta Mittha Bàt
Edited By Farzana Gounder, Nikhat Shameem, Jennifer Khan-Janif
In this collection of Fiji Hindi kahawat, Khatta Mittha Bàt the editors have pulled together a generation of Fiji Hindi sayings and advice, most linked with the evolution of Indo-Fijians as Girmit descendants and inheritors of a Girmit Hindustani identity and culture. Including the core areas of wisdom, perseverance, identity, hope, respect, and resilience the book weaves its way through the sayings which have sustained humour, irony and self-deprecation in this community. In Fiji, Girmit lasted from 1879-1916, a period when the Girmityà (indentured labourers) were transported from India to Fiji to work on the colonial sugar, copra, and rice plantations. They presented an excellent substitute for slave labour. Cheap and voiceless they learnt to survive in the new environment and like the Girmityà who went to other countries, developed a whole new language, culture and identity which mark them today. The editors of this collection of Fiji Hindi kahawat trace their journey through the truths they arrived at and the warnings they had for their fellow Girmityà and their descendants. Each kahawat included in the book has the equivalent English meaning for greater understanding of context and flavour and for the enjoyment of a wider audience.
Collective Memory, Identity and the Legacies of Slavery and Indenture
Edited By Farzana Gounder, Bridget Brereton, Jerome Egger, Hilde Neus
The Caribbean history provides a rich study of the different forms of labour systems that have historically marked the politics of the coloniser and the colonised. It further provides the basis for an essential study for discourses on colonialism and capitalism. This interdisciplinary volume bridges the gap between historiography and the present-day diasporic communities, which emerged from the slave trade and indenture. Through case studies from the Caribbean context, the volume demonstrates how the region’s historical labour mobility remains central to performances and negotiations of collective memory and identity.
Women, Gender and the Legacy of Slavery and Indenture
By Farzana Gounder, Kalpana Hiralal, Amba Pande, Maurits S. Hassankhan
The age of imperialism ushered in a new phenomenon of large-scale organized migration of labourers through the systems of slavery and indenture, which were devised to feed the colonial political-economy. Another feature of such migrations was that it led to the permanent settlement of the uprooted African and Asian labourers in the new lands. These developments, in the long run, intertwined the histories of the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’, the so-called ‘civilized’ and the ‘uncivilized’ along with the people from various continents, thus giving rise to plural societies. The narratives, however, remained dominated by the colonial legacies and frames of reference. Today such historical colonial narratives are being challenged and clarified through multi-disciplinary academic engagements. The authors in this volume take gender as a prominent analytical category and raise new questions and understandings in the way we conceptualize, document and write about gendered migrations in the diaspora.
Social Aspects of Health, Medicine and Disease in the Colonial and Post-colonial Era
Edited by Henk Menke, Jane Buckingham, Farzana Gounder, Ashutosh Kumar, & Maurits S. Hassankhan
From the 1600s, enslaved people, and after abolition of slavery, indentured labourers were transported to work on plantations in distant European colonies. Inhuman conditions and new pathogens often resulted in disease and death. Central to this book is the encounter between introduced and local understanding of disease and the therapeutic responses in the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific contexts.
European response to diseases, focussed on protecting the white minority. Enslaved labourers from Africa and indentured labourers from India, China and Java provided interpretations and answers to health challenges based on their own cultures and medicinal understanding of the plants they had brought with them or which they found in the natural habitat of their new homes. Colonizers, enslaved and indentured labourers learned from each other and from the indigenous peoples who were marginalized by the expansion of plantations. This volume explores the medical, cultural and personal implications of these encounters, with the broad concept of medical pluralism linking the diversity of regional and cultural focus offered in each chapter.
Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands
Edited by Farzana Gounder
Comprising of more than twenty five percent of the world’s known languages, the Pacific is considered to be the most linguistically diverse region in the world. What unifies the region is the culture of storytelling, which provides a fundamental means for perpetuating cultural knowledge across generations. The volume brings together linguists, literary theorists, anthropologists and historians to explore the Pacific peoples’ constructions of identities through narrative. Chapters are organized under three themes: fine grained analysis at the storyworld level, the interactional context of narrative telling, and finally, the interconnections between narrative and cultural memory. The volume reflects the Pacific region’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity, with discussions on the narrativization patterns in Australian and New Zealand English, Palmerston Island and Pitkern-Norfl’k English, Fiji Hindi, Hawaiian, Samoan, Solomon Island Pidgin, the Australian Aboriginal languages Jaminjung and Kriol, the Micronesian languages Mortlockese and Guam Chamorros, and the Vanuatuan languages Auluan, Neverver and Sa.
Book can be ordered from
https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sin.21/main
ISBN 9789027249340
Reviews
Maufort, M. (2021). Narrative and identity construction in the Pacific Islands: edited by Farzana Gounder (2015). Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 9(1), 116-118.
Volume 9 Number 1. DOI: 10.1386/nzps_00057_5
Marsen, S. (2017). Farzana Gounder (ed.), Narrative and identity construction in the Pacific Islands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015. Pp. xvi, 260. Pb. $149. Language in Society, 46(2), 277-279. DOI: 10.1017/S0047404517000124
Musolff, A. (2016). Narrative and identity construction in the Pacific Islands: edited by Farzana Gounder. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 37(8), 862-871. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2016.1173878
Indentured Identities: Resistance and Accommodation in Plantation-Era Fiji
By Farzana Gounder
This book explores the historical dimension of Indian indenture from within the lived experience of laborers, who emigrated to Fiji from colonial India a century ago. As these laborers are no longer alive, one could argue that the experience of indenture is no longer accessible, if there had not been recordings of the laborers’ life narratives. It is seven of these audio recordings, made for public broadcast, which form the data for a fine-grained language-analysis to unearth the life-world of indenture. Through the merging of Labov’s high-point analysis with Bamberg’s positioning analysis, the book focuses on the situated discursive performativity of identities, and draws attention to the complex and at times conflicting positions within the life narratives. Sorting through those positions resulted in the ultimate challenge to the essentially homogenizing current master narrative discourse on who can be classified as an indentured laborer, and what signifies as an indenture experience.
Book can be ordered from
http://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/sin.15/main
ISBN 978 90 272 2655 6
Reviews
Nicole, R. (2014). Indentured Identities: resistance and accommodation in plantation-era Fiji. Journal of Pacific History, 49(1), 124-125. DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2013.876889
Tupas, T. R. F. (2013). Farzana Gounder. Indentured Identities: Resistance and Accommodation in Plantation‐Era Fiji. Amsterdam, The Netherlands/Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2011. 345 pp. Hb (9789027226556) $158.00. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 17(2), 264-266.
Feryok, A. (2012). Indentured identities: Resistance and accommodation in plantation-era Fiji [Book Review]. Te Reo, 55(1), 75-77.