Restorying indenture : the first Fiji Hindi speakers narrate Girmit : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2011
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Massey University
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Abstract
This research is about the framing of Girmit through Fiji Hindi life narratives. The study is
symbolic as it focuses on the life narratives of the first generation of Fiji Hindi speakers.
The seven narrators in this study are part of 60, 965 Indian indentured labourers, or
Girmityas /ˈgɪrˌmɪtjəz/, who voyaged to Fiji between 1879 and 1916, most to work on the
Australian Colonial Sugar Refining Company’s plantations. This study traces their
experiences of indenture, or Girmit /ˈgɪrˌmɪt/, through their life narratives. To date, Girmit
researchers have relied on official documents about the Girmit system while the Girmityas’
voices are either absent, or, at best, excerpted to support the master narrators’ discourse on
Girmit. This study turns to the Girmityas’ life narratives with the question: How do Indian
indentured labourers to Fiji construct life narratives in Fiji Hindi to reconstruct their
indenture experiences, and through the narration process, negotiate positions of identities
and agencies? Beginning with Labov & Waletzky’s (1967/1997), and Labov’s (1972;
1997; 2001; 2004; 2006) high-point analysis, the study analyzes how each Girmit
recollection has been re-constructed. Further, using Bamberg’s (1997; 2003; 2004a;
2004b; 2004c) positioning analysis, the study analyzes the Girmityas’ adopted positionings
in, and through their life narratives. The interweaving of the two frameworks takes the life
narratives from the textual back into the social world of production. The scope of the
research is limited to understanding the interconnectivity between structure, focus, and
manner of narration, within the bounds of memory, the shared knowledge of cultural
ideologies, and the master narratives of indenture, for the purpose of negotiating identities
and agencies favourable to the Girmit narrator. The variables conform each other, and help
explain why these seven life narratives are told. The research makes the following major
contributions: it uses a culturally relevant model of analysis, it details the movement from
structural to performative analysis, it analyzes the factors underlying the performativity of
the Fiji Hindi life narrative; and it analyzes the consequences these performativities have
for the contextually produced self(s). In working towards these contributions, the study
also contributes back to the Fiji Indian community.
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Keywords
Indentured labour, Fiji Indians, Personal narratives, Fijian Indians