Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents (63 page)

[>]
 
six hundred liquor shops: Baroda Administrative Report 1908–09,
p. 21.
a single high school:
Ibid., p. 131.
The maharaja:
Sayaji Rao III, the
gaikwad,
or ruler, of the princely state of Baroda from 1874 to 1939, was considered one of the more humane and liberal of the "native rulers," even sympathizing with the Indian nationalist movement. James,
Raj,
p. 337.
His annual report: Baroda Administrative Report 1908–09
and
1909–10
.
One weaver could:
Doug Peacock,
Cotton Times
(
www.cottontimes.co.uk
).

[>]
 
As late as 1866:
Calico Museum of Textiles,
Textile Trade.
three-quarters of the cloth:
Choksey,
Economic Life,
p. 226.
In 1900, three million acres:
These figures are for the Bombay Presidency, which encompassed British Gujarat and more. Ibid.
The British-controlled portion:
Ibid.

[>]
 
Thousands in the region:
Ibid., p. 170.
Historians used to speak:
E. G. Ravenstein first formulated the push-pull principle, though he did not use the term, in a pair of articles published in 1885 and 1889 titled "The Laws of Migration" (
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
46:167–235 and 52:241–305).

[>]
 
Then in 1901:
Prasad, "The Gujaratis of Fiji," pp. 25–27.
In 1908:
Ibid., p. 27. The date of Motiram's arrival may be disputed. Prasad's account, based on passport applications, says Motiram was the second Khatri to arrive in Fiji, first traveling in 1909, and that he visited India in 1916. By this timeline, the first Khatri in Fiji would have been Narotam Karsandas; I am indebted to his descendant Ranjit Solanki, my cousin's husband, who kindly pointed me to a brief reference that eventually led me to Prasad's dissertation. Kiran Narsey's family history, however, says Motiram Narsey arrived in 1907, then returned home for a visit in 1909 after two years. These are not necessarily contradictory, as passports became mandatory only in 1907: Motiram could have traveled early that year without a passport, then visited India in 1909 and returned to Fiji with his first passport. However, Prasad also attributes his date to a July 1974 interview with the late Jayanti Badshah, who was Motiram's sister's son and a Narseys partner.

[>]
 "
anxiously thrust away":
Anonymous, "Calcutta, the City of Palaces,"
Harper's New Monthly Magazine,
February 1867, p. 299.
Ships Jaden with:
Parts of modern Malaysia were then known as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay Colonies; modern Guyana was then British Guiana. What we know as South Africa consisted of four separate entities; of these, only the Colony of Natal imported indentured workers from India, although many of these workers made their way to the Transvaal colony.
Report of the Committee on Indian Emigration,
1910.
a typical cargo:
From 1907 to 1913, two to three indenture ships arrived in Fiji per year, each carrying 758 to 1,131 people.
Report of the Deputation,
1922, "Appendix 1: Immigration and Repatriation, Numerical List of Ships."
A contemporary contract: Fiji Royal Gazette,
1910.
eleven to eighteen weeks:
Lal,
Crossing the Kala Pani,
p. 9.
suicide or meningitis: Report of the Committee,
1910, p. 162.

[>]
 
Steaming in toward Fiji:
Mrs. J. J. McHugh, "Recollections of Early Suva," in
Transactions and Proceedings of the Fiji Society,
pp. 210–14.

But the ship veered:
Colman Wall, "Historical Notes on Suva,"
Domodomo: A Scholarly Journal of the Fiji Museum,
1996, p. 28.
From there they could:
Ibid.

[>]
 
In the harbor:
Postcard of Suva Harbour, 1895.
"When we arrived in Fiji":
This quote, attributed to a 1911 arrival, is from Ali,
Plantation to Politics,
p. 6.
Of the three thousand:
Prasad, "The Gujaratis of Fiji," p. 30.

[>]
 
This "tragic episode":
"The Conquest of the Fijians," in
What Then Must We Do?,
translated by Aylmer Maude (1886; reprint Devon, UK: Green Books, 1991).
ended in 1874:
Ali,
Plantation to Politics,
p. 3.
It was an early British governor:
Lal, "Labouring Men," p. 27.

[>]
 
Fresh from postings:
T. A. Donnelly, M. Quanchi, G.J.A. Kerr,
Fiji in the Pacific: A History and Geography of Fiji,
fourth edition (Milton, Australia: Jacaranda, 1994), p. 48.
In 1879, the first:
Ali,
Plantation to Politics,
p. 14.

[>]
 
An English guidebook:
Schütz,
Suva: A History and Guide.
Indians made up nearly a third:
McNeill and Lal,
Report to the Government of India.
exports had tripled:
Testimony of Fiji magistrate Robert Malcolm Booth, April 26, 1909, contained in
Report of the Committee on Emigration, Part 2, Minutes of Evidence,
1910, p. 62.
The year that Motiram arrived:
Schütz,
Suva: A History and Guide,
p. 25.
"
served in truly oriental style":
Ibid., p. 29.
Suva boasted:
Mrs. J. J. McHugh, "Recollections of Early Suva," in
Transactions and Proceedings of the Fiji Society,
pp. 210–14.
Walter Horne & Co. Ltd.: Fiji Times and Herald,
Feb. 13, 1919, p. 5.

[>]
 
A hitching post:
Prasad, "The Gujaratis of Fiji," p. 187.
A few yards away:
Sir Henry Scott, "The Development of Suva," in
Transactions and Proceedings of the Fiji Society,
pp. 15–20.

[>]
 "
Conditions were bad":
Choksey,
Economic Life.
"The Narsey business":
Prasad, "The Gujaratis of Fiji," p. 189.

[>]
 
In the Fiji census:
McNeill and Lal,
Report to the Government of India,
p. 260.

[>]
 
In the
Fiji Times and Herald: January 3, 1919, p. 2.
In 1918, a ship:
This occurred in what was then called Western Samoa, now simply Samoa, not to be confused with the nearby American Samoa. Michael Field, "NZ Apologises for Colonial Blunders," Agence France-Presse, June 3, 2002.

PAGE
 3.
BREAD

For the status of Indians in South Africa and the Gujarati Indians' response, I drew primarily on the government documents listed in the bibliography; issues of
Indian Opinion,
the newspaper published by Gandhi's movement in South Africa; Gandhi's memoir
Satyagraha in South Africa;
and contemporaneous histories including Joshi's
The Tyranny of Colour
(1942) and Naicker's
A Historical Synopsis
(ca. 1945). Three recent histories provided additional detail: Freund,
Insiders and Outsiders;
Bhana and Brain,
Setting Down Roots;
and Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa,
which was particularly useful for its detailed timeline of laws and restrictions. Kalpana Hiralal kindly provided me with parts of her dissertation, "Indian Family Businesses in the Natal Economy, 1890–1950" (University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000), which informed my understanding of the Gujaratis of Grey Street.
I use the contemporary term "Afrikaners" throughout this chapter to refer to the dominant white group in South Africa, even during the colonial period when they were known, sometimes proudly and sometimes with derision, as the Boers. Insight into Afrikaner politics was provided by sources including O'Meara's
Forty Lost Years
and Calpin's
At Last We Have Got Our Country Back.
"To deny yourself":
Jan Hennop, March 4, 2001.

[>]
 "
There were, say": Indian Opinion,
December 2, 1905, pp. 812–13.

[>]
 
The first whites settled:
Leonard Thompson,
A History of South Africa,
revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 33–36.
"The fate of the Colony":
Quoted in Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa,
p. 4.

[>]
 "
The ordinary Coolie":
Ibid., p. 16.
"There is probably not":
Ibid., p. 19.

[>]
 
The census taker warned: Census of the Colony of Natal, April 1904,
pp. 25–26.
"As the steamers sailed": Indian Opinion,
December 2, 1905, pp. 812–13.

[>]
 
At the port leading to:
The shortest way to reach Johannesburg was to disembark at Delagoa Bay, in modern Mozambique, and then travel inland by train.
"The whole subject is":
Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa,
p. 69, quoting a Colonial Office minute dated June 17, 1897.
Trade with India:
James,
Raj,
p. 365.
By 1901: Restrictions upon British Indian Subjects,
1900.

[>]
 "
entirely satisfactory":
Ibid.

[>]
 
One shipmaster locked: Indian Opinion,
November 11–18, 1905, pp. 764, 778.
And officials confiscated:
Bhana and Brain,
Setting Down Roots,
pp. 130–36.
"a second-rate Bombay": Indian Opinion,
December 30, 1905, p. 875. My description of Durban and its Grey Street area early in the century also draws from Tichmann's
Gandhi Sites in Durban;
Badsha's
Imperial Ghetto;
and
The Official Guide to Durban with Map,
1926–27 edition, published by the Durban Publicity Association.

[>]
 "
black matter in the wrong place":
Quoted in Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa,
p. 244.

[>]
 
three thousand indentured: Indian Opinion
supplement, February 18, 1905.
"on the smell of an oil rag":
The origin of this phrase is uncertain, but it is repeatedly found in written and oral texts of the time. Huttenback, in
Gandhi in South Africa,
cites one of the earliest instances, an article in the
Rhodesia Herald,
June 4, 1898, which says that Indians are "filthy dirty, and with their uncleanly habits may at any time sow the seeds of deadly epidemic. They live upon what may be termed the smell of an oiled rag, and the result is that in certain branches of business they dislocated trade by cutting-down prices, to the detriment of the legitimate trader" (p. 237).

[>]
 
By 1908, the licensing bureau:
Huttenback,
Gandhi in South Africa,
p. 246.

[>]
 el capitán: Newspaper profile of Ranchhod Kapitan contained in Kapitan family file, Old Courthouse Museum, Durban.

[>]
 
at a courtyard fountain:
Meer,
Portrait of Indian South Africans,
p. 188.
"a religion that recognizes polygamy":
Cape Supreme Court, vol. 81, case no. 319.
"I then awoke": Satyagraha in South Africa,
p. 33.

[>]
 
At 113 Grey Street
: Bridglal Pachai, "Aliens in the Political Hierarchy," in Pachai,
South Africa's Indians,
p. 21.
It became "shameful": Satyagraha in South Africa,
p. 68.

[>]
 
Three in five were born:
Dhupelia-Mesthrie,
From Cane Fields to Freedom,
p. 13.
In keeping with the times:
Meer,
Portrait of Indian South Africans,
p. 190.

[>]
 
Aboobaker Mansions
: named for Aboobaker Amod, elsewhere spelled Abu-bakr. According to Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Amod was the first "passenger" Indian in South Africa and the first to receive a license to trade in West Street.
As black Africans entered:
University of Natal,
Durban Housing Survey,
p. 21.

[>]
 
a 1944 planning map:
Racial zoning map titled "Proposals Recommended by the Provincial Post-War Works and Reconstruction Commission, 1944," included in University of Natal,
Durban Housing Survey.
The date of this change:
South Africa's Group Areas Amendment Act, Act 57 of 1957, gave the executive branch the power to create proclamations that would levy a £200 fine or impose two years of imprisonment on a person found guilty of "attending any place of public entertainment or partaking of any refreshment at a place where refreshments are served" in a segregated area. Proclamation No. 333, of November 1, 1957, imposed the law nationwide, effectively segregating most restaurants and other public spaces. (
Survey of Race Relations,
1956–57, pp. 27–29.) However, a similar restriction had already been in effect in Durban, as locals date the bunny chow's invention to the 1940s or earlier.

[>]
 
To aid white family farms:
Details of bread policies and pricing throughout this section are from official histories contained in two South African government documents: the
Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Government's Bread Subsidy Scheme
by a commission chaired by F. J. Davin (September 1985), and
Evaluating the Deregulation Process: Wheat to Bread Value Chain
by the Section 7 Committee of the National Agricultural Marketing Council (December 1999).

[>]
 "
Vote for white bread":
O'Meara,
Forty Lost Years,
p. 19.
Back in 1912: Indian Opinion,
January 13, 1912, p. 15.