“The opposite of love is not hate, its indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, its indifference.”
Elie Wiese
WHEN indentured labourers were brought to Fiji from India, they were promised a journey of only 700 miles and the chance to make a better life for themselves.
These promises have since been well documented to have been hollow and some indentured labourers faced more difficult conditions than those they left behind in their motherland.
Indentured system
According to a research paper prepared by two academics — Umesh Sharma of University of Waikato and corresponding author Helen Irvine of Queensland University of Technology — titled The commerdification of labor: accounting for indentured workers in Fijian sugar plantations 1879- 1920, the indenture system in its raw nature controlled and measured labourers as an object of production and often treated them as slaves.
To make matters worse, the Fijian colonial government then was more focused on economic development and productivity rather than the safety and welfare of its labourers.
According to them the Fijian colonial government usually sided with the Colonial Sugar Refinery (CSR) in disputes.
An example was the case of Bootan, who lost his hand in a mill accident in Nausori in 1887.
According to the findings of the paper, “CSR refused to pay the injured labourer his wages and rations on the grounds that it could not be “called upon to help a man who will not help himself”.
“Secretary endorsed CSR’s position even while acknowledging that the injury had “not resulted from carelessness” on the part of the labourer.
And the abuse and mistreatment of the indentured labourers was not restricted solely to their masters, it extended to faith-based bodies that were present in Fiji at the time.
This mistreatment was the subject of a paper by Methodist Church Secretary for Communications and Overseas Missions Reverend James Bhagwan, who says the topic of the indentured period has been glossed over by society for far too long.
Mr Bhagwan, who is a PhD candidate for the School of Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific (USP), said during the indentured period there were a number of gaps between Wesleyan theological ethics and its actual practice by its missionaries.
He said some were glaring and others were more subtle.
His work seeks to shed light on some troublesome issues faced by the indentured labourers in their early days in Fiji and the fact they were discriminated against and thought less of by their colonial masters and some natives in power.
He said after reading of mission history from a post-colonial perspective he arrived at the conclusion that despite the diverse positive impact of the Wesleyan Mission, it also had a dark side.
“This includes political manipulation, capitalism, and individualism and in the case of indenture legitimisation of oppressive structures,” Mr Bhagwan said.
“The same Wesleyan Methodist society that opposed slavery and blackbirding in other mission fields was deafeningly silent in the face of the inhumane treatment of native and indentured labourers, despite having regular reports of every issue in the mission field.
He said the double standards caused a lot of problems for the labourers and their harsh treatment was justified as a way to make them work.
Mr Bhagwan referred to a report in a Missionary Review that indicated how some of their comments betrayed their own bigotry reports.
“Some people say that there are only two classes of Indian coolies (unskilled labourers), those in gaol and those who ought to be there. A large percentage of them are men of the lowest morality, the very dregs in fact of the Indian people. All the evidence we can get points to the terrible menace these people are to the wellbeing of our church and the people of Fiji,” the review states.
Pastor John Williams of Faizabad
The discrimination against the Indian indentured labourers also extended to church officials of Indian descent like Pastor John Williams of Faizabad, India
According to Mr Bhagwan’s research, Mr Williams arrived in Suva in 1892, 13 years after the arrival of the Leonidas.
“Despite his devotion and early success, Williams faced a number of serious obstacles,” Mr Bhagwan said.
He said Mr Williams preached to 60 Indians at the Jubilee Church in Toorak, Suva on his first Sunday.
“He held services in ten preaching places in the Nausori/Rewa area and his mission work took him even to the Suva Gaol, where he preached to 400 Indians at the time made up 90 per cent of the gaol’s inmates.
Mr Bhagwan said Mr Williams prepared 25 Indians for baptism, nine of whom were from gaol during these missions.
He said Mr Williams faced a lot of difficulties and eventually these difficulties took its toll on him and his family, often treated as a second-class citizen, like the native ministers and often neglected by his fellow European missionaries.
This was mainly due to the fact in those days anyone who associated themselves with Indians were considered inferior.
This led to his wife and son returning to India in 1893 because they felt lonely and homesick in their isolated cottage in the Rewa Delta.
Call for change
It has been more than 100 years now since the last indentured labourers ship anchored on Fiji’s shores and much has changed since then. From the attitudes of the Methodist Church and society to the success of members of the Indian Diaspora.
During an interview turaga na tui Noco Ratu Isoa Damudamu commented on the kinship now felt by the vanua and the descendants of the indentured labourers.
“Ira na Idia era mate era mai bulu ena qele vaka Noco, sa ra qele ni vanua o Noco, ya na veiwekani ya na sega ni rawa ni dua e kauta tani, sa ra mai qele o ira i na vanua o Noco, o ira vata keimami na lewe ni vanua o Noco sa dua ga na mata tamata. (To the Indians who have died and buried on Noco land, they are a part of the land now and no one can ever take away that relationship, the Indo-Fijians and us of Noco we are one people),” Ratu Damudamu said.
“Koya au sa vakaraitaka kina o kemuni o ni sa kai Noco se o kemuni o ni sa kai Rewa. (That is why I wantto let you know that you are counted as one from Noco and you are from Rewa as well),” he said.
