Revised Edition. TEARS IN PARADISE, extensively researched and eloquently written, is the history of our forefathers who were brought under the infamous indentured labour system to Fiji by the British Colonial authorities from 1879 to 1916. The saga of these young, mostly illiterate, simple rural folks, lured by false promises of an ever-elusive 'Paradise', needs to be read and remembered. The author has done a remarkable task of compiling the story of this Indian Diaspora, people defenceless under an alien and systematically inhumane system, yet preserving their culture while creating the wealth and beauty of the land they made their home.

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Sites of Desire/Economies of Pleasure in Asia and the PacificLenore Manderson, Margaret Jolly. Ch. 1: Educating Desire in Colonial Southeast Asia: Foucault, Freud and Imperial Sexualities Ann Staler Ch. 2: Contested Images and Common Strategies: Early Colonial Sexual Politics in the Massim Adam Reed Ch. 3: Gaze and Grasp: Plantations, Desires, Indentured Indians, and Colonial Law in Fiji John D. Kelly Ch. 4: From Point Venus to Bali Ha'i: Eroticism and Exoticism in Representations of the Pacific Margaret Jolly Ch. 5: Parables of Imperialism and Fantasies of the Exotic: Western Representations and Thailand - Place and Sex Lenore Manderson Ch. 6: Primal Dream: Masculinism, Sin and Salvation in Thailand's Sex Trade Annette Hamilton Ch. 7: Kathoey > Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Kelly opens new questions about dialogue, colonial power, and changing conditions of political possibility by examining the connection between politics and sexual morality in the British colony of Fiji from 1929 to 1932.

This book focuses on the spatial experiences of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritius and Fiji and reveals previously unexplored labour movements across the so-called Indentured Archipelago. It offers a historical geographical perspective of the lives of these labourers in Mauritius and Fiji, situating their experiences in the wider context of spatial mobility and subaltern agency. The concept of re-migration - labourers moving between these colonies, and beyond - is explored, and the scale of this facet of indentured life is revealed, in a way which has not been done to date. It brings to the fore a debate on subaltern agency, and role of geography in exploring the lives of these labourers both within and between colonies. The book also brings to light the numerous proposals for the use of Indian indentured labour across the globe, highlighting the centrality of Indian indenture to the post-abolition labour discourse.

"Totaram Sanadhya came to Fiji as a ginnitiya, or indentured labourer, in 1893. In 1914, he returned to India and together with Benarsides Chaturvedi wrote this book, a powerful indictment of the indentured labour system and the treatment of Indians in Fiji. ... It was one of the most frequently used sources of information and argument during the public movement in Inmdia that led to the abolition of indenture in the 1910s; the movement Gandhi later called the first national sayagraba. ... [This] volume also includes an English translation of The story of the haunted line: a moving story of a man saved from fear and despair by Hindu devotion and the friendship of ethnic Fijians."--Back cover.

‘What I have sought to do in my work is to give voiceless people a voice, place and purpose, the sense of dignity and inner strength that comes from never giving up no matter how difficult the circumstances. History belongs as much to the vanquished as to the victors.’ — Brij V. Lal ‘Professor Brij Lal is the finest historian of the Indian indentured experience and the Indian diaspora. His Girmitiyas is a classic.’ — Emeritus Professor Clem Seecharan, London Metropolitan University ‘Brij Lal is a highly respected, versatile and imaginative scholar who has made a lasting contribution to the historiography of the Pacific.’ — Dr Rod Alley, Victoria University of Wellington ‘Professor Brij Lal’s life is a remarkable journey of a scholar and an intellectual whose writings are truly transformative; a man of moral clarity and courage who also has deep pain at being cut off from his homeland.’ — Professor Michael Wesley, Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University ‘Brij Lal is a singular scholar, whose work has spanned disciplines – from history, political commentary, encyclopedia, biography and “faction”. Brij is without doubt the most eminent scholar in the humanities and social sciences Fiji has ever produced. He also remains one of the most significant public intellectuals of his country, despite having been banned from entering it in 2009.’ — Emeritus Professor Clive Moore, University of Queensland ‘Brij Lal is an accomplished and versatile historian and true son of Fiji. Above all, there is affirmation here of the enduring worth of good literature and the value of good education that Lal received and wants others to experience. The world needs more Lals who speak out against ruling opinions and dare to stray into the pastures of independent thought.’ — Professor Doug Munro, historian and biographer, Wellington, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize: “[Bahadur] combines her journalistic eye for detail and story-telling gifts with probing questions . . . a haunting portrait.” —The Independent In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a “coolie” —the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. Now, in Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Gaiutra Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother’s story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives. Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages—traumatic “middle passages” —only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, especially, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. Greatly outnumbered by men, they were able to use sex with their overseers to gain various advantages, an act that often incited fatal retaliations from coolie men and sometimes larger uprisings of laborers against their overlords. Complex and unpredictable, sex was nevertheless a powerful tool. Examining this and many other facets of these remarkable women’s lives, Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora—from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next—that is at once a search for roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.

The book explores the historical dimension of Indian indenture from within the lived experience of laborers, who emigrated to Fiji from colonial India a century ago. As these laborers are no longer alive, one could argue that the experience of indenture is no longer accessible, if there had not been recordings of the laborers life narratives. It is seven of these audio recordings, made for public broadcast, which form the data for a fine-grained language-analysis to unearth the life-world of indenture. Through the merging of Labov s high-point analysis with Bamberg s positioning analysis, the book focuses on the situated discursive performativity of identities, and draws attention to the complex and at times conflicting positions within the life narratives. Sorting through those positions resulted in the ultimate challenge to the essentially homogenizing current master narrative discourse on who can be classified as an indentured laborer, and what signifies as an indenture experience."