Since the Indian Weekender has started its campaign - Do you have a Girmit story? – there has been an overwhelming response from its readers sharing their Girmit stories.
In this series, Faaris Ali from Sydney, Australia, shares the story of his great-grandfather Faiz Mohammad Khan, who had arrived in Fiji in 1903 and endured a life of hardship and struggle in pursuit of better future.
Faaris Ali is thirty-three-year-old fifth generation Fiji-Indian, currently working as Analytics Professional in Sydney, and is proud of his Girmit heritage.
“I am thirty-three year old and have been researching for over two years now about the Girmitiyas in my family,” Mr Ali told the Indian Weekender.
“I am a fifth generation Fijian Indian, and I have now traced fifteen members of my family who came as Girmitiyas from India.
“I hope to pay tribute to my great grandfather by sharing his story,” Mr Ali said.
“I think the yearning to understand where we came from is a universal human desire and it certainly has not diminished with the younger generation,” Mr Ali told the Indian Weekender, rejecting the generalisation that younger generations of the Fiji-Indian community are not doing enough to reclaim their cultural heritage.
Running away in pursuit of the elusive dream of ‘better life’
The story of Faiz Mohammad is very similar to the stories of many other first-generation settlers from India, who were conspicuously lured, away from their original homes in India, feeding on their respective fears of facing the vagaries of day to day lives.
In Faiz’s case, it is believed he was running away from home as he did not want to marry his deceased brother's wife. He was hardly nineteen when he embarked upon a journey across the oceans, with no certainty to ever return to his original home.
A revisit to those tense, but defining moments would shiver many today, as it was through numerous such defining moments that the history of Girmitiyas was created.
Faiz was born in 1884 in the village of Dujana, Rohtak near the outskirts of Dehli. He came to Fiji at the age of 19 years on board the sailing ship Mersey
The journey on the ship: the pain begins
Faiz’s journey began in Calcutta on Saturday, April 11, 1903, when he boarded Mersey ship travelling for about two months and reaching Fiji on Saturday, June 13.
Mersey was a three mast iron-hulled sailing ship 82.5 meters in length, 12 meters in width and 6.9 meters in depth.
Faiz, along with 584 other Girmitiyas, had spent two months at sea on board Mersey ship, in those cramped conditions.
The beginning of the Girmit days
Fiji was indentured at the Navatu plantation under the CSR Company, eventually working his way up to become a stable master.
Like many others, during those times not every experience was grim and distressing, especially when the young people found life-partners around them, in a hope to start families and possibly share the burden of their respective Girmit lives.
It is during this time Faiz met his wife Jiari, a Hindu of the Ahir caste who was indentured at the nearby Rarawai plantation.
It is believed that Faiz would have lived in a barrack of sixteen rooms, eight on each side called ‘lines’.
For five years, he would have shared a room of 10 feet by 7 feet (3.1 meters by 2.1 meters) with three other single persons.
The rooms had doors but no windows and sometimes no floors. The partitions did not reach the ceiling, and there was instead a wire netting link for ventilation.
The room was a store-house, kitchen, living room and bedroom.
The concept of privacy as we understand today was non-existent in those days, especially when scant respect was paid to the basic human dignity of the Girmitiyas.
It is believed that he would have begun his day at 4 am with the call from the pani-wala as he delivered water for the day.
After breakfast he would have walked to the plantations to be allocated his daily task, working all day with an hour’s break for lunch.
The allocated task had to be finished in the day with the whip being constantly used as punishment for not complying with orders.
Work was hard as Girmitiyas were expected to cut sugarcane to fill three trucks or dig drains for around 100 to 150 meters in length daily.
Faiz never returned to India, maybe he didn’t have the means, or maybe he couldn’t face his family after running away.
Or maybe he thought he would not be accepted back after marrying outside his caste (Faiz was a Rajput).
Reconnecting with the place of origin
Faariz Ali thinks that he was lucky enough to visit his par dada’s village last year in 2017.
“The villagers were very welcoming and told me this was my village as much as theirs.
Faaris Ali with a local resident in Rohtak, India, in a trip to reconnect with his roots.
“I didn't expect to find any family members, but I did find a plaque in an old mosque with the name Faiz Mohammed Khan written on it.
“In many ways, I feel like I completed the journey my par dada had started about 115 years ago by returning back to Dujana,” Mr Ali told the Indian Weekender.
If you have a Girmit story that you want to share please email at editor@indianweekender.co.nz
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