During this special girmit celebration, I cannot but think of Professor Brij V. Lal, a grandson of girmitiya, who passed away almost one and half years ago, and how much he would have loved to be part of this national celebration.
Having spent much of his professional life researching and documenting the history of Fiji girmit and girmitiya, our peoples and their experiences, and having worked as one of the three commissioners on Fiji’s Constitutional Review Commission in 1995, Brij had also thought a lot about the issue of reconciliation between our iTaukei and Indo-Fijians, and the sense of “belonging”.
An inspirational step
Brij, I am certain would have agreed, what an inspirational step this Coalition Government took in declaring a national Girmit Day, and a public holiday on May 15.
The first such day announced in the history of Fiji to celebrate girmitiya and their descendants, like Brij.
By establishing the national Girmit Day, the Rabuka Coalition Government is acknowledging not just the arrival of thousands of girmitiya to the shore of Fiji under the Indenture System, but also marking their efforts, and the hard work of their children and grandchildren, like Brij, that helped build Fiji we know today.
To many, including myself, the Girmit Day announcement also demonstrates the commitment of the Government to the goal of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence of all communities in Fiji.
Brij would have loved to have attended this international girmit conference, in Fiji, and to have the opportunity to share not only his love of girmit history and diasporic studies that he championed, but also showcase and share our food, music, dance and other forms of culture with other scholars and descendants of global girmitiya communities who will be attending the conference.
I know Brij would have enjoyed reminiscing about girmit, girmitiya and other Indians, like my father who came to Fiji as free migrants, over glasses or bottles of spirits, with his former colleagues and friends he used to meet only during girmit/Indian indenture conferences elsewhere in places like Netherlands, Mauritius, South Africa and the Caribbeans.
Brij would have been chuffed to know so many serious scholars he worked with, and the next generation of scholars, are here in Fiji to not just share expertise and knowledge but to also learn first-hand about the peoples and subject matters he wrote about in his hundreds of academic journal articles and close to 50 books.
Forging unity and understanding
Holding celebratory events in Suva and around the country will allow different groups of Fiji people, from all walks of life, coming together to celebrate, as well as forge greater understandings and better relationships.
The official visit to Naivilaca Village to mark how the people of Noco saved drowning Indians from the wrecked ship Syria in 1884, and the declaration of the village as the Peace Village could not be more fitting for me personally as well.
The late Tomasi Vakatora as many would know hailed from the village of Naivilaca in the district of Noco, and he and Brij worked as part of a three-person Constitutional Review Commission in mid 1990s.
After a year-long wide consultation in Fiji and abroad in multi-ethnic countries such as Malaysia, and South Africa, Mauritius and Trinidad, and listening to public submissions as well as extensive research on multi-ethnic constitutions, they produced the consensus Constitutional Review Report, and which subsequently led to the highly regarded 1997 Constitution of Fiji, and which was unanimously endorsed by the Great Council of Chiefs and the Fiji Parliament.
It saddened us all when that Constitution was abrogated, and we were forced to live under autocratic rule for the past 16 years.
While the late Mr Vakatora’s people had saved 438 of the 497 girmitiya from the wrecked Syria in 1884, this incident was marked a hundred years later with the establishment of a monument at the Syria Park, Nausori, which was unveiled by the then Governor-General, Ratu Sir George Cakobau.
Many years later, the descendants of these Indian indentured labourers who survived the wreck were recognised as “Luvedra na Ratu” or “children of the chief” by the people of Rewa.
This was seen as a symbolic moment because it was the first time that girmitiya was formally recognised in Fijian custom.
Significance
The visit to Naivilaca is also very significant for me personally, as it reminds me how after the commission’s submission of the Constitution
Review Report to the then president of Fiji, Sir Ratu Kamisese Mara, Mr Vakatora took Brij and I on a visit to the same ship wreck site on Nasilai Reef, and to his village.
On that boat trip, which he captained taking Brij, Wai and I, he said to us to the effect, “My people saved your people then. Today you
and I have produced a constitution report, that hopefully will save our, iTaukei and Indo-Fijian, people.”
For Brij and I, this said volumes, and we felt, whatever our historical differences may have been, we can overcome the ethnic divide in Fiji, if we only can find the heart and mind to create shared experiences, and develop that understanding, Trust and respect for each other’s customs and cultures.
Genuine gesture
Twenty-five years on, in February 2023, another important public gesture reminded me once again, that yes, we can bridge the ethnic
divide we have experienced in Fiji all our lives.
This is when PM Rabuka apologised for the injustice done to Brij and I, by the previous government when they banned us from returning to Fiji, our mother country.
We were moved by the Government’s apology on the day of Brij’s interment on February 25 in Tabia.
We are particularly honoured this apology was reinforced through the formal iTaukei ceremony of the presentation of the tabua to I, his wife.
“Tabua,” the herald said is “iTaukei’s sacred emblem from the vanua [of Nasoso], from the vanua of Caumatalevu, from the kin of the Turaga na i Taukei Bolatagane, [who is also the Tui Macuata] and someone who also serves in Government and with whom we share kingship ties, as the Head of State, the President of Fiji.
“We acknowledge the vanua themselves had nothing to do with Professor Brij Lal’s (and my) unjust exile, and deeply respect that, they took it upon themselves to receive Professor Lal as part of their vanua and seek forgiveness. In recognising and releasing the transgressors, our own release also becomes much more possible”.
This is the English translation of what was said by the herald, representing the vanua of Nasoso and the vanua of Caumatalevu, during the ceremony of ai soli ni yago, conducted on behalf of Government of Fiji.
Ai soli ni yago, I learnt on the day, is a traditional iTaukei ceremony conducted when returning a deceased person’s body or ash to his vanua.
Reconciliation, tolerance and goodwill
No words can describe the depth of our feeling with this acceptance by the vanua and Fiji that Brij belonged, a subject that Brij and I had often dwelled on for years, and Brij had often written about.
In his book, BitterSweet, in 2004, for example, Brij wrote, “for how many generations does one have to live in a place to be allowed to call it
home?”
For the nation, this public acknowledgement in Tabia, we understand, may also be the first of its kind, that reflects perhaps finally the beginning of the acceptance of what late Jai Ram Reddy, the leader of the Indo-Fijian people, had talked about, 26 years ago at the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) meeting on June 6, 1997.
At the GCC meeting, Mr Reddy had humbly and respectfully requested the chiefs to remember that they had responsibility over all people of Fiji, including Indo-Fijians, who are covered by the umbrella of a vanua whence they were born, and over which members of the Great Council of Chiefs preside.
Without doubt the declaration of the Girmit Day and associated celebrations, and the reestablishment of Ratu Sukuna Day Celebration in later this month will gradually lead us to that stage of reconciliation where we all feel we belong, no matter what.
• Dr PADMA LAL is the wife of the late Professor BRIJ LAL. The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of this newspaper.
