Across the Kala Pani

Across the Kala Pani PDF

Author: Shevlyn Mottai

Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa

Published: 2022-10-01

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1776380320

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1909, four women board a ship in Madras to cross the Kala Pani, the ‘black water’, to Natal. Lutchmee, a young widow, has escaped her vengeful mother-in-law and self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre. Vottie, from the Brahmin caste, is an educated girl whose abusive husband tries to hold on to his caste at all costs. Chinmah, heavily pregnant when she boards the ship, is married to an older man as part of an unpaid debt. Dazzling but shy Jyothi is single. On board the ship, the women will form friendships and alliances. They will help each other through trial and trauma, even after they arrive and are separated. Like many Indians desperate to escape unbearable conditions in their home country, these women are only too eager to believe what they’ve been told: that a better life awaits them in South Africa, where caste doesn’t matter, food is plentiful, and liberty will be theirs after just five years. But the reality of life on the plantations reveals the truth about the crossing: that it is usually a one-way journey, rife with misery, and that the hardship doesn’t end after the ship has dropped anchor in Durban harbour. The epic stories of these immigrants – the brave, the bold, the kind; the weak, the cruel, the cowardly – are woven into the fabric of South Africa’s Indian population today. Shevlyn Mottai has drawn on her ancestors’ history to highlight the bonds formed between women during adversity, and to celebrate their journeys of tragedy and triumph.

Kala Pani Crossings

Kala Pani Crossings PDF

Author: Ashutosh Bhardwaj

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-12-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 100051319X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

When used in India, the term Kala pani refers to the cellular jail in Port Blair, where the British colonisers sent a select category of freedom fighters. In the diaspora it refers to the transoceanic migration of indentured labour from India to plantation colonies across the globe from the mid-19th century onwards. This volume discusses the legacies of indenture in the Caribbean, Reunion, Mauritius, and Fiji, and how they still imbue our present. More importantly, it draws attention to India and raises new questions: doesn’t one need, at some stage, to wonder why this forgotten chapter of Indian history needs to be retrieved? How is it that this history is better known outside India than in India itself? What are the advantages of shining a torch onto a history that was made invisible? Why have the tribulations of the old diaspora been swept under the carpet at a time when the successes of the new diaspora have been foregrounded? What do we stand to gain from resurrecting these histories in the early 21st century and from shifting our perspectives? A key volume on Indian diaspora, modern history, indentured labour, and the legacy of indentureship, this co-edited collection of essays examines these questions largely through the frame of important works of literature and cinema, folk songs, and oral tales, making it an artistic enquiry of the past and of the present. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of world history, especially labour history, literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, diaspora studies, sociology and social anthropology, Indian Ocean studies, and South Asian studies.

Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora

Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora PDF

Author: Judith Misrahi-Barak

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-06

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 100381610X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume explores the intersections of diaspora and gender within the diasporic and Indian imagination. It investigates the ways in which race, class, caste, gender, and sexuality intersect with concepts of home, belonging, displacement and the reinvention of the nation and of self. Positioning itself as a companion to Kala Pani Crossings: Revisiting 19th century Migrations from India’s Perspective (Routledge, 2021), the present book examines whether indentureship and diasporic locations marginalised women and men or empowered them; how negotiations or resistances have been determined by race, class, caste, or ethnicity; how traditional standards of Indianness and gender relations have been reshaped; how ideas of home, self and the nation have been impacted in the diaspora and in India after the 19th and early 20th century indentureship migration; and what 21st century Indians stand to gain by theorizing the legacy of 19th century indenture through a gender framework. To understand how fiction and non-fiction writers have negotiated the legacy of indentureship to create spaces where normative practices can be interrogated and challenged, the book gives pride of place to interviews with writers such as Cyril Dabydeen, Ananda Devi, Ramabai Espinet, Davina Ittoo, Brij Lal, Peggy Mohan, Shani Mootoo, and Khal Torabully. Thus rooted in critical analyses but also in subjective and creative perspectives, this volume is a major intervention in understanding Indian indenture and its legacy in the diaspora and in India. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literature, history, Indian Ocean studies, migration and South Asian studies.

Kala Pani

Kala Pani PDF

Author: Rehana Ebr.-Vally

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9780795701351

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An exploration of so-called Indian identity in South Africa and its transformations after apartheid.

Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad 1917–1947

Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad 1917–1947 PDF

Author: P. Mohammed

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-01-16

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1403914168

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is about the struggles of female and male descendants of Indian indentured migrants in Trinidad in the first half of the twentieth century, each desiring to preserve some aspects of the gender system brought from India between 1845 and 1917, which were important to their continued definition of ethnic identity and community in Trinidad. At the same time the situation of migration allows for challenges to the caste system of Hinduism and, for women and some men, new opportunities to confront the more restricting aspect of Indian patriarchy which followed them across the seas from India.

The Island of Black Waters (Kala Pani)

The Island of Black Waters (Kala Pani) PDF

Author: Hadrat Maulana Muhammad Thanseri Sahib

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-05

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The contents of the book in hand, deal primarily with the third struggle, made in 1862, spearheaded by Maulânâ Muhammad Ja'far Thanserî Sâhib (ra), a wealthy saint of his time. The book, penned as an autobiography, describes, in the most beautiful of ways, the sacrifices made by this giant of Islam, which includes, amongst others; being framed by his associates, being issued the death sentence, having all his possessions confiscated, having his sentence changed to life-imprisonment at Kâlâ Pânî (Black Waters), an island of Indonesia, used by the British as a prison base for those prisoners who were regarded as most dangerous to the state, etc.The book describes, at full length, how, when Almighty Allâh(swt) decides to keep one in a comfortable condition, no power on earth can change that decision. It gives an example of how the fire of Ibrâhîm (swt) was turned into a garden, by illustrating how the island of Kâlâ Pânî became as comfortable as home, for this servant of Allâh (swt).Where he had to suffer being separated from his wife and children, Almighty Allâh (swt) offered him recompense almost immediately, that while still in captivity, he was able to make two more nikâhs (marriage contracts), and was blessed with ten more children, naming each one after the one he had lost in India. Finally, after twenty years of imprisonment, he returns to his homeland, as a sign of the power of Almighty Allâh (swt), that for whomsoever Allâh (swt) has written honour and respect, none can bring upon him a disgrace.

Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920: Volume 1

Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920: Volume 1 PDF

Author: Evelyn O'Callaghan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-01-14

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 1108678327

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume examines what Caribbean literature looked like before 1920 by surveying the print culture of the period. The emphasis is on narrative, including an enormous range of genres, in varying venues, and in multiple languages of the Caribbean. Essays examine lesser-known authors and writing previously marginalized as nonliterary: popular writing in newspapers and pamphlets; fiction and poetry such as romances, sentimental novels, and ballads; non-elite memoirs and letters, such as the narratives of the enslaved or the working classes, especially women. Many contributions are comparative, multilingual, and regional. Some infer the cultural presence of subaltern groups within the texts of the dominant classes. Almost all of the chapters move easily between time periods, linking texts, writers, and literary movements in ways that expand traditional notions of literary influence and canon formation. Using literary, cultural, and historical analyses, this book provides a complete re-examination of early Caribbean literature.

Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English

Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures in English PDF

Author: Poddar Prem Poddar

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-08-07

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 1474471714

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is the first reference guide to the political, cultural and economic histories that form the subject-matter of postcolonial literatures written in English.The focus of the Companion is principally on the histories of postcolonial literatures in the Anglophone world - Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Canada. There are also long entries discussing the literatures and histories of those further areas that have also claimed the title 'postcolonial', notably Britain, East Asia, Ireland, Latin America and the United States. The Companion contains:*220 entries written by 150 acknowledged scholars of postcolonial history and literature;*covers major events, ideas, movements, and figures in postcolonial histories*long regional survey essays on historiography and women's histories. Each entry provides a summary of the historical event or topic and bibliographies of postcolonial literary works and histories. Extensive cross-references and indexes enable readers to locate particular literary texts in their relevant historical contexts, as well as to discover related literary texts and histories in other regions with ease.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes