Inside Indian Indenture

Many were filled with hopes as high as Mahjoub's stars as they crossed the Indian Ocean, making their way from India to Durban in southern Africa in the late 1800s. Yet, realising the dream of a better life and returning home triumphant was not to be for many. Thousands returned with less than they had started out with, only to find that home was no longer the place they had left. The travellers, too, had changed irrevocably: caste had been transgressed, relatives had died and spaces for reintegration had closed up as colonialism tightened its grip. Home for these wandering exiles was no more. Inside Indian Indenture is a timely and monumental work that makes a significant contribution to understanding South African history. It tells the story of the many beginnings and multiple journeys that made up the indentured experience. The authors seek to trespass directly into the lives of the indentured themselves. They explore the terrain of the everyday, focusing on religious and cultural expressions, leisure activities, power relations on the plantations and the weapons of resistance and forms of collaboration that were developed in relation to their Natal's colonial government and its coercive paternalism. Fascinating accounts brimming with desire, skulduggery and tender mercies, as much as with oppression and exploitation, show that the indentured were as much agents as they were victims and silent witnesses. To read this book is to enter their world, to meet real people in all their complexity as they danced along the uncertain edge between improvisation and resignation. The title substantially revises the contours of South African Indian historiography and starts to weave these themes into the mainstream of southern African studies. It also makes the South African experience available to scholars of comparative work on indenture.