Indo-Fijians
Indo-Fijians are people born in Fiji, but are ethnically Indian. The constitution of Fiji defines "Indian" as anybody who can trace, through either the male or the female line, their ancestry back to anywhere on the Indian subcontinent. They are mostly descended by indentured labourers brought to the islands by Fiji's British colonial rulers between 1879 and 1916 to work on Fiji's sugar plantations. These were complemented by the later arrival of Gujarati and Punjabi immigrants.
Origins
The colonial authorities promoted the sugar cane industry, recognizing the need to establish a stable economic base for the colony, but were unwilling to exploit indigenous labour and threaten the Fijian way of life. The use of imported labour from the Solomon Islands and what is now Vanuatu generated protests in the United Kingdom, and the Governor Sir Arthur Hamilton-Gordon decided to implement the indentured labour scheme, which had existed in the British Empire since 1837. A recruiting office was set up in Calcutta, followed by another in South India in 1905.
The Leonidas, a labour transport vessel, disembarked at Levuka from Calcutta on 14 May 1879. The 463 indentured servants who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from the South Asia over the following 37 years. More than 70 % were from impoverished districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, such as Basti, Gonda, and Faizabad. Another quarter came from the emigration prone districts of Tamil nadu state of South India such as North Arcot, Chingleput, and Madras (see Tamil diaspora).
There were smaller numbers from Punjab, Kashmir, Haryana, and other parts of India. Their contracts, which they called girmits, required them to work in Fiji for a period of five years. After a further five years of work as a Kulka, or free labourer, they would be given the choice of returning to India at the expense of the British government, or remaining in Fiji. The great majority opted to stay. After the expiry of their girmits, many leased small plots from Fijians and developed their own sugarcane fields or cattle farmlets. Others went into business in the towns that were beginning to spring up.
Living conditions on the sugar cane plantations, on which most of the girmits worked, were often squalid. Hovels known as "coolie lines" dotted the landscape. The two-to-one ratio of males to females (the scheme brought in 31,458 males but only 13,696 females) created a social crisis as competition for wives and sexual partners led to occurrences of rape, murder, and suicide. Female girmits were exploited not only by male labourers, but also by colonial overseers. Public outrage in the United Kingdom at such abuses was a factor in the decision to halt the scheme in 1916.
Political participation : early 1900s
The colonial rulers attempted to assuage Indian discontent by providing for one of their number to be nominated to the Legislative Council from 1916 onwards. Badri Maharaj, a strong supporter of the British Empire but with little support among his own people, was appointed by the Governor in 1916. His appointment did little to redress the grievances of the Indian community. Buttressed by the Indian Imperial Association founded by Manilal Maganlal, a lawyer who had arrived in Fiji in 1912, the Indians continued to campaign for better work and living conditions, and for an extension of the municipal franchise; literacy tests disqualified most Indians from participation. A strike by Indian municipal workers and Public Works Department employees, which began on 15 January 1920, ended in a riot which was forcibly quelled on 12 February; Manilal, widely blamed for the unrest, was deported. Another strike, from January to July in 1921, led by Sadhu (priest) Basist Muni, demanded higher rates of pay for workers of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), the unconditional return of Manilal, and the release of imprisoned 1920 strikers. The authorities responded by deporting Muni from Fiji.
Demands increased for direct representation in the legislature. In 1929, Indian immigrants and their descendants were authorised to elect three members to the Legislative Council on a communal roll. Vishnu Deo, James Ramchandar and Parmanand Singh were duly elected. Agitation continued for a common roll, which the colonial administrators rejected, citing the fears of European settlers and Fijian chiefs that a common electoral roll would lead to political domination by Indians, whose numbers were rapidly increasing.
Religious and social divisions : 1920 - 1945
Two major Hindu movements attracted widespread support in the 1920s, and relationships between Hindus and Muslims also became increasingly strained.
The Arya Samaj advocated purging Hinduism of what it saw as its superstitious elements and expensive rituals, opposed child marriage, and advocated the remarriage of widows, which orthodox Hinduism forbids. The Arya Samaj began by establishing schools and by founding a newspaper, the Fiji Samachar, in 1923.
Preachers like Shri Krishna Sharma toured the country, promoting the education of women and the learning of the English language. More controversially, it called in 1929 for the forced conversion of Muslims to Hinduism. Legislators Deo and Singh were both Samaj activists. Deo was eventually arrested and forced to resign from the Legislative Council after making a public speech attacking traditional tenets of his own faith, ridiculing Hindu deities, and publishing extracts from the Hindu scriptures which the authorities considered to be obscene (source).
The Sanatan Dharma, was more orthodox than the Arya Samaj. It affirmed traditional Hindu rituals, supported child marriage, discouraged the remarriage of widows, and adopted conciliatory policies towards Muslims.
The Fiji Muslim League was founded in 1926. It defended the Muslim community against Arya Samaj attacks, and appealed to the British colonial authorities for help.
Divisions also arose between Indian immigrants and Fiji-born Indians, who later became known as Fiji Indians or Indo-Fijians. A.D. Patel, who later founded one of Fiji's first political parties, the National Federation Party, arrived in Fiji in 1928 and advocated unrestricted immigration. He was opposed by the Fiji-born legislator Parmanand Singh, who argued that immigrants came with skills that gave them an economic advantage over the locally-born Indo-Fijian community. Moreover, Gujarati and Punjabi immigrants often failed to assimilate with the Indo-Fijians, and persisted with caste distinctions that had been largely forgotten by the native-born community.
The onset of World War II in 1939 heightened divisions, not only between indigenous Fijians and Indians, but also between the native-born and the immigrants. The Arya Samaj-inspired Kisan Sangh cane growers association wished to defer any strike action until the end of the war, but Patel and some supporters founded the more militant Maha Sangh in 1941. A strike organized by the Maha Sangh in 1943, while World War II was at its height, embittered relationships between the Indian community and the colonial government, and also the indigenous Fijian community. Forty-four years later, this strike was cited by supporters of the military coup which overthrew a largely Indo-Fijian dominated government, as grounds for mistrusting the Indian community. Some claimed that the strike was politically motivated, with Patel seeing it as a means to strike at colonial rule.
Developments since 1945
A post-war effort by European members of the Legislative Council to repatriate Indo-Fijians to India, starting with sixteen-year-old males and fourteen-year-old females, was not successful, but reflected the tensions between Fiji's ethnic communities.
Differences between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians complicated preparations for Fijian independence, which the United Kingdom granted in 1970, and have continued to define Fijian politics since. Prior to independence, Indo-Fijians sought a common electoral roll, based on the principle of "one man, one vote." Ethnic Fijian leaders opposed this, believing that it would favour urban voters who were mostly Indo-Fijian; they sought a communal franchise instead, with different ethnic groups voting on separate electoral rolls. At a specially convened conference in London in April 1970, a compromise was worked out, under which parliamentary seats would be allocated by ethnicity, with ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians represented equally. In the House of Representatives, each ethnic group was allocated 22 seats, with 12 representing Communal constituencies (elected by voters registered as members of their particular ethnic group) and a further 10 representing National constituencies (distributed by ethnicity but elected by universal suffrage. A further 8 seats were reserved for ethnic minorities, 3 from "communal" and 5 from "national" constituencies.
Indo-Fijians outnumbered indigenous Fijians from 1956 through the late 1980s, but by 2000 their share of the population had declined to 43.7 %, because of a higher ethnic-Fijian birthrate and particularly because of the greater tendency of Indo-Fijians to emigrate. Emigration accelerated following the coups of 1987 (which removed an Indo-Fijian-supported government from power and, for a time, ushered in a constitution that discriminated against them in numerous ways) and of 2000 (which removed an Indo-Fijian Prime Minister from office).
Political differences between the two communities, rather than ideological differences, have characterized Fijian politics since independence, with the two communities generally voting for different political parties. The National Federation Party founded by A.D. Patel, was the party favoured overwhelmingly by the Indo-Fijian community throughout most of the nation's history, but its support collapsed in the parliamentary election of 1999, when it lost all of its seats in the House of Representatives; its support fell further still in the 2001 election, when it received only 22 % of the Indo-Fijian vote. The party currently favoured by Indo-Fijians is the Fiji Labour Party, led by Mahendra Chaudhry, which received about 75 % of the Indo-Fijian vote in 2001, and won all 19 seats reserved for Indo-Fijians. Originally founded as a multi-racial party in the 1980s, it is now supported mostly by Indo-Fijians.
Demographic factors
Indo-Fijians are concentrated in the so-called Sugar Belt and in cities and towns on the northern and western coasts of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu; their numbers are much scarcer in the south and inland areas. The majority of Indo-Fijians are Hindi speakers, with large minorities speaking Urdu, Tamil, Bihari, and Punjabi, among others. Almost all Indo-Fijians are also fluent in English, and in the younger generation, English appears to be gradually replacing Indian languages.
According to the 1996 census (the latest available), 76.7 % of Indo-Fijians are Hindus and a further 15.9 % are Muslims. Christians comprise 6.1 % of the Indo-Fijian population, while about 0.9 % are members of the Sikh faith. The remaining 0.4 % are mostly nonreligious.
Hindus in Fiji belong mostly to the Sanatan sect (74.3 % of all Hindus); a minority (3.7 %) follow Arya Samaj. There are smaller sects, as well as numerous unspecified Hindus, comprising 22 % of the Hindu population. Muslims are mostly Sunni (59.7 %) or unspecified (36.7 %); there is an Ahmadiya minority (3.6 %). Indo-Fijian Christians are a diverse body, with Methodists forming the largest group (26.2 %), followed by the Assemblies of God (22.3 %), Roman Catholics (17 %), and Anglicans (5.8 %). The remaining 28.7 % belong to a medley of denominations.