Fiji - Kelly

Question 1

Indenture system in Fiji - date it started and ended, where, and who?

Answer 1

• IndoFijians. Brought over from India to Fiji by British colony.
• Work in system of indenture which was a system of labour in which Indians agreed to go to Fiji an work under contract for 5 years and get a salary.
• Idea of indenture was seen as a step ahead from slavery (which is a much contested statement, as we will see in this essay).
  This indenture started in 1879 and was outlawed in 1917 after protests over the social conditions on the plantatinos

Question 2

Kelly’s text - what does he focus on?

Answer 2

• Looks at how indenture system fell apart in Fiji through two diverging moral discourses focused on the treatment of Indian women within the “coolie lines”
• focusing on livelihoods from the starting point of “coolie lines” - violence against women
• His text explores the discourses that seek to explain, justify, and/or oppose to that violence, particularly focusing on how women are seen in terms of the violence.

Question 3

Kellys main point:

Answer 3

two competing moral discourses - or hegemonic and counter hegemonic ideas.

Question 4

British colonial attitudes:

Answer 4

Colonial administrators thought that Indian indentured workers would be improved economically, physically and morally by their labour on the cane plantations

That they were inherently prone to vilence

Women on coolie lines were promiscious

The colonial overseers were not willing to confront their own role in this violence, as Kelly states in his 1997 text, they would constantly produce the narrative of “sexual jealously”

Courts would ignore the claims being made about these administrators.

Question 5

QUOTE ABOUT BRITISH COLONIAL ATTITUDES:

Answer 5

‘It was the moral duty of the Europeans to lead and guide the Indians out of degeneracy… this was the moral framework and justification for indenture and the rest of colonial relations’ (p4)

Question 6

Indian anti-indenture arguments (counter hegemonic discourse)

Answer 6

Gained traction…

• These European overseers portrayed as absuing women almost demonic, compared to the Hindu demon-figure Ravana.
• Movement lead to indenture being outlawed in 1917.