Girmitiyas

Girmitiya or Jahajis are indentured Indian labourers that were brought to Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, and the Caribbean (mostly Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica) to work on sugarcane plantations for the prosperity of the European settlers and save the Fijians from having to work on these plantations and thus to preserve their culture. "Agreement" is the term that has been coined into "Girmit", referring to the "Agreement" of the British Government with the Indian labourers as to the length of stay in Fiji and the Caribbean, and when they would be allowed to go back to India.

See also

• Indian indenture system
• Indo-Caribbeans
• Indians in Fiji
• Fiji Hindi
• Fijian Indian diaspora
• Coolitude

Further reading

• Gillion, Kenneth (1962). Fiji's Indian migrants : a history of the end of indenture in 1920. Melbourne: Oxford U.P.
• Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune, ed. (2000). "Girmitiya". The Pacific Islands : an encyclopedia ([Repr.]. ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 110–111. ISBN 082482265X.
• Lal, Brij V. (2004). Girmitiyas : the origins of the Fiji Indians. Lautoka, Fiji: Fiji Institute of Applied Studies. ISBN 978-0-8248-2265-1.
• Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture. The University of Chicago (2014) ISBN 978-0-226-21138-1
• Khal Torabully, Marina Carter, Coolitude. Anthem University Press, 2002. http://www.anthempress.com/coolitude-pb
• Coolie Lines by Praveen Kumar Jha. Published May 10th 2019 by Vani Prakashan. http://www.vaniprakashan.in/details.php?prod_id=8762&title=Coolie%20Lines

External links

• South Asian Indentured Labor - Online Archive of Research and Resources - an online archive and living syllabus of text-based resources related to Indian indentureship, with country-specific resources and material related to global Indian indenture diasporas
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