Brij V. Lal

Kunti's cry: Indentured women on Fiji plantations

“Women, it has been shown here, generally suffered greater hardships than men. They shouldered the dual burden of plantation work and the double standards of morality, and carried the blame for many of the ills of indenture. To be sure, they were not the chaste heroines of Indian mythology that the Indian nationalists made them out to be, but neither, on the other hand, were they the immoral ‘doe rabbits’ of the overseers’ accounts. Kunti’s private cry was, in a very real sense, a protest against the veil of dishonour that Indian women wore, or rather were made to wear, during their indenture on Fiji plantations.”

Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Fear in Our Land: Fiji's Road to Military Coup, 2006

Abstract On 5 December 2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama, head of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, staged Fijis fourth coup since its first in May 1987. The flashpoint came after a long drawn out confrontation between the military, overwhelmingly indigenous Fijian, against a predominantly Fijian-led government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. The military accused the government of breach of faith and of giving succour to politicians who had been variously implicated in the George Speight-led coup of 2000, rewarding them with ministerial portfolios. The introduction of controversial bills, promising amnesty to coup convicts, and the governments curious unwillingness to take the militarys threats seriously, compounded the problem. The coup deposed a democratically elected government but it also in the process dealt a severe blow to the influence of some of the most important institutions of Fijian society. A military-appointed interim administration, with Bainimarama as prime minister and Labour leader and former coup victim Mahendra Chaudhry as finance minister, has been installed and has promised to hold Fijis next general elections in 2010.

Indian Diaspora in transnational contexts - Introduction

The Indian diaspora has grown apace in the past three decades to comprise more than 20 million people spread over all continents. Although that figure is small compared to the more than a billion inhabitants in the homeland, it has reached a critical mass in various host countries. It has developed institutions, orientations and patterns of living specific to the institutional structures and socio-political contexts of the different hostlands. These patterns have been marked not only by the influences of the hostland culture but also by relations with the homeland. All the papers in this issue show two things: that the consciousness of homeland is never completely missing, and that the transnational context is part and parcel of diaspora and, indeed, implicit in its very definition. In other words, those who argue, like Gilroy, that diaspora is merely ‘‘where it’s at’’, are wrong; but so are those, like Glick-Schiller, who substitute diaspora with transnational relations. This special issue is of interest because it studies the Indian diaspora from the ground up. Several of the papers are based on personal interviews in selected American cities. They explore problems encountered in attempts at negotiating an identity that is a balance of ‘‘Americanness’’ and ‘‘Indianness’’. In so doing, the papers address themselves to questions frequently posed in connection with diasporas worldwide: how are diasporas formed? How do their members relate to their hostland, and how do they resolve the tension between the need to adjust to their new surroundings and the need to preserve their cultural identities? What roles do

Fiji's constitutional conundrum

Fijis 1997 multiracial constitution has had a short but troubled history. It has survived a putsch and an attempted abrogation by Fijis military, but nationalist forces have made its revocation a central plank of their political agenda. At the heart of Fijis recent constitutional imbroglio lies a deep debate about the mandatory power-sharing provision of the constitution (section 99) that political parties with more than 10 per cent of seats in parliament are entitled to serve in cabinet. Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase regards the formula as unworkable when political parties have diametrically opposed agendas, while deposed prime minister and Labour leader Mahendra Chaudhry insists that it can work if parties negotiate in good faith, as his own party did in 1999. But beyond the constitutional difficulties lie deeper questions about whether primordiality or political ideology should underpin Fijis political culture. politics in

In Frank Bainimarama's Shadow: Fiji, Elections and the Future

ABSTRACT Fijis much anticipated election was held in September 2014, returning Frank Bainimaramas Fiji First Party to power under a proportional representation open list system sanctioned by the decreed 2013 constitution. It marks an important step on a long and fraught journey back to parliamentary democracy. A new start has been made, but a lot will depend on how deeply Bainimaramas publicly declared multiracial vision is shared by his own supporters, including the military, overwhelming Indigenous Fijian, which has a proven history of being a friend neither of multiracialism nor of democracy. Whether this turns out to be a pyrrhic victory for one man or a turning point in Fijis modern history remains to be seen.

Observations on traditional usage of ethnomedicinal plants in humans and animals of Kangra and Chamba districts of Himachal Pradesh in North-Western Himalaya, India

ETHNOBOTANICAL RELEVANCE Medicinal plants are frequently used by Gaddi and Gujjar tribes of Kangra and Chamba districts of Himachal Pradesh, India to cure various ailments in humans and livestock. Therefore, extensive field work was conducted to document the traditional use of ethnomedicinal plants by these tribes. MATERIALS AND METHODS Direct interviews of 208 informants were conducted. The data generated through interviews was analysed using quantitative tools such as use-value (UV), factor informant consensus (Fic) and fidelity level (Fl). RESULTS A total of 73 plant species in 67 genera and 40 families were observed to be medicinal and used to cure 22 ailment categories. The highest number of ethnomedicinal plants was recorded from the family Asteraceae followed by Lamiaceae, Apiaceae, Acanthaceae, Caesalpiniaceae, Polygonaceae, Ranunculaceae, Rosaceae and Rutaceae. Leaves were the most frequently used plant part used to treat various ailments followed by whole plant and roots or rhizomes. Ajuga parviflora, Berberis lycium, Viola canescens, Vitex negundo and Zanthoxylum armatum were the most important medicinal plants used for treating human diseases, whereas Achyranthes bidentata, Aloe sp., Cassia fistula, Podophyllum hexandrum and Pogostemon benghalensis were the most important medicinal plants used for treating animal diseases as per use value. The important ailment categories classified on the basis of factor informant consensus were gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders. CONCLUSION The present study revealed that people of the study area are extensively using the ethnomedicinal plants to cure various ailments. Plants with high use value and fidelity level should be subjected to pharmacological investigation for scientific validation.

Editorial: Fiji: The Road to 2014 and Beyond

On 17 September 2014, Fiji went to the polls for the eleventh time since independence in 1970 and eight years after its latest coup in 2006. Commodore Frank Bainimarama was the architect of that coup. Six years later, his newly formed party, FijiFirst, handily won the elections, capturing 32 of the 50 seats in the single chamber parliament. His nearest rival, the indigenous Fijian-based Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA), won 15 seats and the National Federation Party, traditionally the party of the IndoFijians, the remaining three. Other parties, including the once dominant Fiji Labour Party led by Fiji’s one time (and so far the only Indo-Fijian) Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, failed altogether. The elections were significant not just because they were held at all: Bainimarama had reneged on his promise to hold elections in 2009 and many doubted whether he would honour his commitment in 2014. They were significant because the results hold the potential finally to sever Fiji’s links to its failed, race-obsessed past and point the country in a new direction. That is the hope of all Fiji citizens. But just as one swallow does not a summer make, one election cannot tell us much about the future evolution of political culture in a country afflicted with a history of military coups. The path to true representative democracy of the Westminster type, a semblance of which Fiji had since independence in 1970, faces a stiff uphill battle. Nonetheless, most observers concur that the election results have created the possibility of change. Whether it is allowed to come to fruition, and what shape it will take, are matters that must remain open for the foreseeable future. Fiji is a bit like Churchill’s Russia, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. This most developed and sophisticated of independent nations in the South Pacific, endowed with ample natural resources and a talented and educated population, has been prone to self-inflected wounds in the form of coups that have hobbled its prospects and dented its future. The economy has stumbled and its foundations are fragile. The best and the brightest have left for greener pastures elsewhere, principally Australia and New Zealand, and more would leave if they could; and the region in which Fiji was once the undisputed leader is fragmented and Fiji’s moral authority within it diminished. Pope John Paul II’s remarks during a fleeting visit to the country in 1985 that Fiji was a symbol of hope to the world now in the aftermath of coups and convulsions seem hauntingly surreal. That is why, when it comes to Fiji, optimism and caution have to go hand in hand. The latest elections provide a good vantage point from which to take stock of where Fiji is at present and what its prospects for the future look like. I say good vantage point because the elections were different in significant ways from all the previous ones, different in both content and style. They were held under a new constitution that abolished communal voting, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, introduced open list

Trinidad during the 19th century: the Indian experience

In 1974, Hugh Tinker published his massively influential account of Indian indenture titled A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Abroad, 1830–1920 (London: Oxford University Press)....

A Girmitiya ‘Sepoy’

Each of Anthony Low’s students will have a story to tell about how they came to work with him as one of his ‘sepoys’. Let me share mine. In 1976, I had finished my Masters in History at the University of British Columbia with a thesis on the early history of the East Indian community in Canada. I was hooked on the discipline and attracted to the prospects of an academic career. In the course of my research, I had come across Charles Price’s The Great White Walls are Built, on the restrictions on Asian immigration in the white dominions. I thought I could extend the scope of that study for my doctoral thesis by examining the history of Indian migration. Upon returning to Fiji, I wrote to Price at The Australian National University about working with him. As I discovered much later, Price did not think I had sufficient background in demography to do justice to the subject in which his own interests were at best tangential, but saw enough potential in my application to forward it to the director of the Research School of Pacific Studies, Wang Gungwu. Gungwu was approving, but Indian migration was not his field. Consequently, he forwarded my file to Anthony Low, then the vice-chancellor of the ANU and a distinguished South Asianist, albeit one with no expertise in the field of Indian migration. Nevertheless, Anthony agreed to take me on, sight unseen, and that is how I won an ANU research scholarship. That is how things happened in those days, a time now vanished beyond recall. A week or two after arriving in Canberra in August 1977, I trooped up to the fourth floor of the Chancelry Building to meet Professor Low. At precisely 10:15 am, I was ushered through the door to his office. Anthony greeted me, a tall, formally-attired, Edward Heath-lookalike scholar with a mellifluous English voice and a benevolent, reassuring demeanour of a kindly parish priest. He ordered tea for both of us. His office walls were lined with shelves overflowing with books and papers. I had seen academic offices before, but this was somehow different, imposing. I was impressed, hugely impressed, that someone running a large university had time to supervise students and read and write books. Those days, too, are now ancient history. We talked politely about what I do not now know, but I do remember Anthony asking me to settle in, talk to his other students in the South Asia History section and see him a month or two later to discuss my thesis proposal if I had one by then.

Fiji Indians and the Fiji general elections of 2014: Between a rock and a hard place and a few other spots in between

In the September 2014 Fiji general elections an estimated 80 per cent of Indo-Fijians voted for Commodore Frank Bainimarama’s newly formed FijiFirst Party (Lal 2014; Larson 2014).1 The extent of the support was startling even though Indo-Fijians have a history of splitting their votes more frequently than indigenous Fijians have. In the 1972 general elections, for instance, 24 per cent of Indo-Fijian votes went to the Alliance Party, with that figure declining significantly over the decades as coups and ensuing convulsions soured race relations and deepened the divide between the two communities (Lal 2006a; Ali 1973). However viewed, the Indo-Fijian shift away from traditionally Indo-Fijian parties to FijiFirst is significant, even perhaps historic. Several factors are responsible. On the one hand was the Bainimarama Government’s ruthless use of incumbency to its enormous advantage and to the manifest disadvantage of the opposition parties, inventing and bending rules as it went along, and its generous and unaccounted