Publication: Oceania
Publication Date: 01-SEP-05
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Trnka, Susanna
Article Excerpt
A NATION WITHOUT INDIANS
Less than two months before the May 19, 2000 coup, the authorized biography of the former Prime Minister and architect of the 1987 coups, Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka appeared in Suva bookshops. In the final chapter of the biography, an excerpt of which appeared in mid-March 2000 in the popular Fiji Times newspaper under the banner 'Migration the Key' (Fiji Times, March 15, 2000:3), Rabuka offered his view of the future of Indo-Fijians in Fiji. In reference to the inevitable widespread expiry of land leases, Rabuka foretold that in the next five to ten years there was potential for an increase [in] the racial divide in the sense that the rural areas will be Fijian dominated, the urban areas will be Indian dominated. Fijians will be 'agra-based' [sic], more Indians will go into manufacturing, light industry and the import-export trade. We (Fijians) will be the retail outlet, the supermarket shoppers. This is a concern for me but I think we will have to live through it. My other hope is that the Indians will migrate. We tighten the controls, then Fiji is no longer attractive to the Indian settler as it has been over the last 120 years. Maybe they will slow down their immigration rate, probably increase their emigration rate, thereby having a natural decline in their numbers, to a level that would be manageable. When I talk about a manageable level I am talking about the tolerance threshold of the Fijians. Now it is beyond their tolerance level and that is why they are reacting, not because of the numbers but what the Indians can do with the numbers. If they can gain control of the professional life, the economic life, and the political life of this country with the numbers they have, then the tolerance level, the numbers level will have to be greatly reduced. And we won't do that by the Butadroka-kind of policy, forced migration, but by circumstances-driven migration
(Rabuka quoted in Sharpham 2000:316-317). Rabuka's proposal to build a nation through expulsion is certainly nothing new. The image of an ethnically pure state has its pre-cursors in the expulsion and extermination of Jews in Germany and other parts of Europe during World War II, the ethnic cleansing recently witnessed in parts of former Yugoslavia, and the efforts to consolidate ethnically homogenous populations in Rwanda, to name only a few. While eschewing suggestions for the forced expulsion of Indo-Fijians, such as those of the Taukei (indigenous Fijian nationalist) leader Sakeasi Butadroka who in 1975 proposed to the Fiji Parliament that Fiji's Indian community should be repatriated to India (Lal, B.V. 1992:237), Rabuka ominously hints that a 'circumstances-driven migration' might compel Indo-Fijians to quit Fiji of their own free will.
His predictions were right on target. Prior to the 2000 coup, Indians in Fiji numbered approximately 339,000, making up 44% of the population of Fiji (1996 census, the Fiji Bureau of Statistics). By 2004, their numbers had gone down to 320,000. The downward trend began after the two coups of 1987, with the 2000 coup adding to the impetus. Figures for migration in 2001 reflect almost a 20% rise from the total number of migrants in 2000, with Indo-Fijians composing approximately 85-90% of those leaving Fiji. In total, since May 2000, an estimated 24,000 Indo-Fijians have left Fiji, most of them resettling in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. (1)
'CITIZENSHIP AND ITS ALTERITIES'
The increasing numbers migrating out of the country are a steady sign that many Indians or Indo-Fijians (I use the terms interchangeably in this paper) have abandoned living in Fiji, at least for the time being. More than a quarter million Indo-Fijians, however, still remain in Fiji. Those who have stayed have had to adjust not only to Fiji's continuing economic crisis since the coup, but also to their increasing political marginalisation. How have they responded to the current transformations of their political status?
In this paper, I adopt Carol Greenhouse's concept of 'empirical citizenship' to explore how Indo-Fijians articulate and live out their place in a nation that has over the past 18 years (since 1987) and more especially over the last five years, pushed them onto the fringes of the body politic. In her examination of 'citizenship and its alterities' Greenhouse suggests that alongside questions of political representation and rights, citizenship must also be analysed through the 'domains ... of personal experience' (1999:105; see also 2002). (2) Taking Greenhouse up on her suggestion that we look at citizenship not only through political representation and rights but also by asking 'how people incorporate the state into their own self understandings and agency' (1999:105), I propose to explore three facets of citizenship for Indo-Fijians in Fiji--inclusion in national politics, legal and economic rights (such as rights to protection by the state), and expressions of belonging to a national community. I will also consider how, despite the attempts of many Indo-Fijians to separate political inclusion from legal and economic rights and expressions of belonging, these three aspects of citizenship are closely inter-related.
Drawing on fieldwork I conducted in Fiji from 1999 to 2000 (including the period of the 2000 coup) and in 2005, as well as my continuing contact with Indo-Fijian immigrants in New Zealand, I examine how Indo-Fijians express their relationship to the Fijian nation as embodied by the physical investment of their labour in Fiji. I show how despite many Indo-Fijians' hesitation to explicitly engage in the struggle over political rights, such as the right to a democratically elected government, they actively refute Taukei (indigenous Fijian nationalist) claims that Indians have usurped land, and therefore wealth, from indigenous Fijians. Evoking their historically articulated link to Fijian land and soil as indentured labourers, they lay claim to the right to labour and live off Fijian-owned land. Desiring primarily that their physical safety as well as the basis for their economic existence in Fiji be protected, many Indo-Fijians have reacted to the intense political upheaval and to their increasing marginalisation by expressing a notion of citizenship that turns away from issues of political inclusion to those of legal and economic rights and national belonging. I argue, however, that Indo-Fijian attempts to placate indigenous Fijian nationalist demands for their expulsion by claiming for themselves a form of citizenship without full political representation have not resulted in stabilizing their position in Fiji. This is so because their assertions of national belonging inherently entail claims to rights (including the right to make a living) that are similarly under dispute.
HISTORIES OF SETTLEMENT
Contrary to Rabuka's suggestion that there is still a significant number of incoming Indian 'settlers', most of Fiji's Indo-Fijian community has lived in the country for two, three or more generations. With the exception of a small Gujarati community most of which came to Fiji between 1900 and 1940 (Kelly 1992) and a small number of migrants from other parts of South Asia, the bulk of Indians in Fiji are the descendants of the 60,000 girmitiyas or indentured labourers who were brought over by the British colonial government to work on Fiji's sugar plantations from 1879 to 1920.
Initially considered by the British colonial government as little more than 'labour units' who would serve their five-year contracts and then return to India (Kelly 1990), by the time Fiji achieved independence in 1970,...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
More articles from
Oceania
Introduction: HIV and AIDS in rural Papua New Guinea, 01-MAR-07
Sovasova and the problem of sameness: converging interpretive frameworks for making sense of HIV and AIDS in the Trobriand Islands, 01-MAR-07
'Turning sex into a game': Gogodala men's response to the AIDS epidemic and condom promotion in rural Papua New Guinea., 01-MAR-07
Looking for additional articles?
Click here to search our database of over 3 million articles.
Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Click here to search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication name or publication date.
About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company analysis or best practices in managing your organization, Goliath can help you meet your business needs.
Our extensive business information databases empower business professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible, authoritative information they need to support their business goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting, company research or defining management best practices - Goliath is your leading source for accurate information. |
