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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

A Community of Sentiment:

Indo-Fijian Music and Identity Discourse in Fiji and its Diaspora

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

in Ethnomusicology

by

Kevin Christopher Miller

2008

The dissertation of Kevin Christopher Miller is approved.

AkhilGupta

Helen Rees

Timothy Rice

Anthony Seeger, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2008

11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures viList of Musical Examples viiiIndian and Fijian Language Pronunciation Guide ixAcknowledgments xiVita xivAbstract xvii

I. Research Foundations 1

Chapter 1. Introduction 2Does "Indo-Fijian Music " Exist? 5Aims of this Dissertation 8Fieldwork Locations 10Previous Scholarship on Indo-Fijian Culture 10Dissertation Outline 14

Chapter 2. Engaging Theory and Method 17Defining Identity, Defending Identity 19Turning to Community 22Discursive Claims: Productive Dimensions of Musical Practice 26On Methodology 31

II. Context: Indo-Fijian History and Hindu Practice 37

Chapter 3. A Social and Political History of Indians in Fiji 38The Social and Demographic Origins of Indo-Fijians 41The Experience of Indian Indenture in Fiji: 1879-1920 51Post-Indenture Indo-Fijian Society and the Early Independence Period 60Coups and Emigration: A Political History from 1987 71Conclusion 80

Chapter 4. The Development of Hinduism During Fiji's Colonial Period (1879-1970) 84Rupture and Suture: Hinduism under Indenture (1879-1920) 89Spectacle and Cooperation:

Religious Festivals during the Indenture Period (1879-1920) 98Division and Withdrawal:

Sectarian Hinduism and Colonial Society (1920s-1930s) 107Debate and Coalescence: The Rise ofSanatan Dharm (1930-1970) 115Conclusion 125

Chapter 5. Hinduism in Contemporary Fiji: Bhakti and the Centrality of the Ramayana 128Aspects of Hindu Belief and Practice in Contemporary Fiji: Ritual 134Aspects of Hindu Belief and Practice in Contemporary Fiji:

Revered Individuals, Sacred Places 146Tulsidas' Ramcaritmanas: The Heart ofSanatan Dharm in Fiji 158Sanatan Dharm and Religious Institutionalism: A Field of Discourse 169

iii

Conclusion 174

HI. Music, Place, and Community in Western Viti Levu 177

Chapter 6. Indo-Fijian Music and the Rural Context 178Performance Fundamentals: An Introduction to the Core Ensemble 181In the Shadow of the Sleeping Giant: The Sabeto Settlement 189The Pandit and the Community: Ram-Bhakti in the Rural West 193Music and the Hindu Ritual Calendar. Singing for Phagua 215Performing Phagua in Sabeto: The Music and Meaning of the Faag Mandali 228Conclusion 239

Chapter 7. Indo-Fijian Music and the Urban Context 242Lautoka: Urban Drift and Rural Memory 246The Ramayan Mandali: Organization and Weekly Ramayana Recital 252The Ramayan Mandali: The Ramlila and other Activities 274Keeping Good Company: The Ramayan Mandali, Satsahg, and Community 284Music, Hinduism, and Islam: Tambura Bhajan and Qawali 294"Local Folk Music " and Classicization: A Discourse 314Conclusion 325

IV. Music and Representation: Indo-Fijians, the Nation, and Transnationalism 329

Chapter 8. In the Fold of the Nation: Indo-Fijians, Performance, and the National Context 330Ethnic Relations in Contemporary Fiji: An Overview 336Choreographing (Against) Coup Culture:

Reconciliation and Collaborative Performance 344Crossing the River: Indigenous Fijian Singers of the Hindi Repertoire 366Conclusion 311

Chapter 9. Place and Between: Music of Indo-Fijian Twice Migrants in the Pacific Rim 381From Immigrant to Emigrant: Indo-Fijians as "Twice Migrants " 386Finally Fijian ?:

Indo-Fijian Music and Identity Discourse in Auckland, New Zealand 395Bollywood, Bhojpuri, and Bhakti:

Transnational Media and Twice Migrant Identity 407Conclusion 419

V. Conclusions 423

Chapter 10. Conclusions: Sounding a Community of Sentiment 424Drawing the Boundaries of Community through Song 426Performing Music, Contesting Community 421Performance as Productive Representation: Envisioning National Community 430Sonic Connections of Sentiment in Transnational Community 432Coda 433

IV

Appendix 1: Research Consent Form 436Appendix 2: Survey 437Appendix 3: Summary of Ramcaritmanas (Ramayana) Narrative 439Glossary 442Discography 460References 462

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Map of Fiji 11

2. Map of Colonial India 44

3. Girmitiya Woman 55

4. Ravan Effigy at early Ramlila 99

5. Tazids built for Muharram 102

6. Dhappala player 141

7. Firewalking Devotees 142

8. Ritual Cleansing 144

9. Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple 156

10. GaneshMandir 157

11. The Core Ensemble 184

12. Dahda tdl player 188

13. Sabeto 191

14. Rot-puja 201

15.RamKatha 207

16. Faag Mandali 220

17. Holi color-play 232

18. Jati text 234

19. Downtown Lautoka 249

20. Ram and Sita at Ramlila 277

VI

21. Ramlila Puppets 278

22. Ramayan mandali, mixed gender 291

23. Shalendra Kumar plays the tamburd 297

24. Tambura bhajan form diagram 308

25. Fiji qawali 312

26. Collaborative dance 359

27. Collaborative dance costume 360

28. Noah Juniya sings hori 373

29. Tambura bhaj an competition 412

VII

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

1. Hanuman Chalisa 203

2. Filmi Bhajan Refrain 211

3. Chaupai Melody 215

4. Faag Sumarni 226

5. Jhumar 228

6. Jogira 236

7. Ramayana Sumarni 260

8. Chaupai Bani 265

9. Old Chaupai Melody 268

10. Doha Melody 271

11. Filmi Melody for Saakhi 309

12. Tambura Bhaj an Transition 309

13. Song with "Bhojpuri Melody" 413

VIII

INDIAN AND FIJIAN LANGUAGE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

In this dissertation, Hindi words usually appear in italics, although those that are

more frequently used (e.g. dholak, mandll, Rdmdyana) may appear in unmarked, non-

italicized font (dholak, mandali, Ramayana). Furthermore, words in Fiji Hindi (e.g.

kavvdll, Phdg) with local spellings may appear without italics and with double vowels

(e.g. qawali, Faag). In some cases, proper nouns in Hindi may appear in a marked, non-

italicized font (e.g. AwadhI, Kausalya). The spelling of quoted materials has been

maintained.

Approximate English equivalents for Hindi:

aaijuueoc, chs, sn, hm

"u" as in "shut""a" as in "saw""i" as in "fit""ee" as in "meet""u" as in "put""oo" as in "boot""ay" as in "way""oa" as in "boat""ch""sh""n"indicates nasaliza

Retroflex consonants:(tongue back against upper palate)n, t, th, d, dh, r

A consonant followed by "h"indicates aspiration

IX

Fijian words also appear in italics. The pronunciation of vowels is relatively

straightforward, although there are several unusual consonant pronunciations devised by

early nineteenth century missionaries that became standard in the Roman script

adaptation of the Fijian language. For example, the city of Nadi should be pronounced

"Nandi" and the island of Beqa should be pronounced "mbenga."

Approximate English equivalents for Fijian:

aeiou

"a'' as in "father""ay" as in "wait""ee" as in "meet""oa" as in "boat""oo" as in "boot"

bdqgc

"mb" as in "member""nd" as in "Monday""ng+g" as in "angry""ng" as in "sing""th" as in "that"

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The list of individuals and organizations that made this dissertation possible far

exceeds the scope of these humble acknowledgments, and I apologize to anyone I have

neglected to acknowledge. First and foremost, I am grateful to the Fiji government,

particularly the Immigration Department and the Ministry of Education, for permission to

conduct ethnographic and archival research in Fiji. Additionally, several institutions and

organizations facilitated my research, including the Fiji Museum (which provided

permission to reprint photographs from its collection), the National Archives of Fiji, the

Pacific Collection at the University of the South Pacific, the Western Regional Library,

the Suva Multiethnic Culture Centre, the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, the

Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam, the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, and the Fiji Girmit

Council.

Among the numerous individuals in Fiji that contributed to this project, my wife

and I are especially indebted to Aruna Raju and the Raju family of Sigatoka for providing

our first home in Fiji, a home I feel will always be waiting for us with an open door.

Special thanks and recognition also goes to Surya Prakash, a fantastic dholak player and

my guru-ji. I also wish to thank my other key field consultants and friends in Fiji

including Mohammed Akief, Naresh Chand, Shobna Chanel, Hasmukhlal Desai, Saras

Goundar, Noah Juniya, Kamlesh Kumar, Surendra Kumar, Ravindra Patel, Mahendra

Prasad, Narendra Prasad, Shiu Prasad, Gyanendra Raju, Avinesh Sami, Krishna Sami,

and Pandit Ranjeet Sharma. In Auckland, New Zealand, I received invaluable help from

XI

Ram Kumar Sewak, Achudan Nair, and the Waitakere Indian Association. In the United

States, I am particularly grateful to the L.A. Geeta Ramayan Mandali, Shiu Balak, Pandit

Naresh Maharaj, Pandit Shalen Sharma, and, notably, Kaushal Raju, whose friendship I

cherish.

Numerous scholars deserve thanks for their input and assistance during the

evolution of this dissertation, including Donald Brenneis, Jennifer Cattermole, Kanti

Jinna, J.S. Kanwal, Brij V. Lal, Philip Lutgendorf, Peter Manuel, Helen Myers, Satendra

Nandan, Jonathon Prasad, Tina K. Ramnarine, Susanna Trnka, and Ian Woolford. Above

all, I am grateful for the invaluable guidance of my dissertation committee, including

Akhil Gupta, Helen Rees, Timothy Rice, and—especially—Anthony Seeger, my advisor.

I can only hope that this dissertation is a worthy tribute to their outstanding mentorship

during my dissertation research and throughout my UCLA graduate career. Here, too, I

owe a debt to Vinay Lal, who, as an early member of my committee (prior to a

scheduling conflict), provided insightful direction to this project.

The research and writing of this dissertation would not have been possible without

the generous financial support of several institutions. I would like to thank UCLA's

Graduate Division for its Summer Research Mentorship Grant (2004) and Dissertation

Year Fellowship (2006-07). I must also acknowledge the support of UCLA's Fowler

Museum for its Ralph C. Airman Award (2004) and UCLA's Department of

Ethnomusicology for its Quality of Graduate Education Grant (2006). I am particularly

indebted to the U.S. Department of Education for its Fulbright-Hays Doctoral

Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (2005-06).

XII

Finally, I am eternally grateful for the love and support of my family members

whose utterly selfless dedication to my project led many of them to visit my wife and me

in beautiful Fiji: Dad, Mom, Sujata, Sue, Erica, Kraig, Frances, Mark, Paul, and Hannah.

A special thanks goes to Sujata for her tireless help and encouragement regarding Indian

linguistic and cultural materials. But the largest share of gratitude goes to my wife

Anoosh, my partner in life and in the field, for her intellectual insights, inexhaustible

emotional support, and brilliant copy-editing. This dissertation would not have been the

same without her. I dedicate this work to her and the family that we are building together.

In closing I would like to share this dedication with the memory of two

remarkable people, both of whom embodied the spirit of the Indo-Fijian experience and,

sadly, passed away during my fieldwork period in Fiji. Bechu "Babuji" Prasad, M.B.E

(1901-2005), a resident of Sabeto, Fiji, was one of the last surviving girmitiyas

(indentured laborers) and dedicated his life to public service. N.K. Naidu (1932-2006), a

resident of Lautoka, was a champion of South Indian culture in Fiji and one of the earliest

supporters of my research. Both will be greatly missed. Ram-nam satya hai.

XIII

VITA

June 24, 1973

1996

1999

1999-2001

2002-03

2002-03

2003

2003

2004

2004

2004

Born, Ann Arbor, Michigan

A. A., AnthropologySanta Fe Community CollegeGainesville, Florida

B. A. Highest Honors, AnthropologyUniversity of FloridaGainesville, Florida

Various positionsSmithsonian Folkways RecordingsWashington, D.C.

Teaching AssistantDepartment of EthnomusicologyUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Graduate Student ResearcherEthnomusicology PublicationsUniversity of California, Los Angeles

BibliographerEthnomusicology ArchiveUniversity of California, Los Angeles

M. A., EthnomusicologyUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Music Committee Chair, Artwallah FestivalLos Angeles, California

Teaching AssistantDepartment of EthnomusicologyUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Fieldwork in Fiji under University of California-Los Angeles Graduate Division Summer ResearchMentorship Grant and Ralph C. Airman Award

XIV

2004-05 FellowshipGraduate DivisionUniversity of California, Los Angeles

2005-06 Fieldwork in Fiji under Fulbright-Hays DoctoralDissertation Research Abroad Fellowship

2006 Fieldwork in New Zealand under University ofCalifornia-Los Angeles Quality of GraduateEducation Summer Research Grant

2006-07 FellowshipGraduate DivisionUniversity of California, Los Angeles

PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS

Miller, K.C. 1999. "Bharata Natyam Abroad: The Performance, Transmission, andDevelopment of a Classical Indian Dance in the United States." University of FloridaB.A. Honors Thesis. Larry Crook, advisor.

-------. 2000. Production Assistant. The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of theAmerican Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine. Sound Recording.Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW CD 40130.

--------. 2002. "The Emerging Beat of India in America: The Fusion Hip Hop ofKarmacy." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Association for theStudy of Popular Music, October, Cleveland, OH.

-------. 2003. ''Desi Sounds and Festival Grounds: Locating Identity, Authenticity, andMusical Syncretism at a South Asian-American Festival." University of California-LosAngeles M.A. Paper. Anthony Seeger, advisor.

------. 2003. "Desi Sounds and Festival Grounds: Authenticity, Identity, and MusicalSyncretism at a South Asian-American Festival." Paper presented at the annual meetingof the Society for Ethnomusicology, October, Miami, FL.

-------. 2004. "Bolly'hood Re-mix: The Cross-cultural Potential of the 'Bollywood'Trend in Mainstream Hip Hop for South Asian- and African-Americans." Paperpresented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies, March,Boston, MA.

xv

-------. 2004. "The Home and the World: Conducting a Local Musical Ethnography on aTranslocal South Asian Music." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the BritishForum for Ethnomusicology, April, Aberdeen, Scotland.

--------. 2004. "Bolly'hood Re-mix." Newsletter of the Institute for Studies in AmericanMusic 32(2): 6-7, 15. City University of New York, Brooklyn.

-------. 2005. "Indo-Fijian Music: The Legacy of South Asia in the South Pacific." Paperpresented at the 3rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities,January, Honolulu, HI.

-------. 2006. "Indo-Fijian Music and Shades of Ethnic Identity." Paper presented at theinternational workshop "Indo-Fijians at Home and Abroad," May, Lautoka, Fiji.

-------. 2006. "Hindus." In Encyclopedia of American Folklife, ed. Simon Bronner.Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

-------. 2006. "From Immigrant to Emigrant in the Pacific Rim: Indo-Fijian Music andthe Forging of a Transnational Community." Paper presented at the annual meeting of theSociety for Ethnomusicology, November, Waikiki, HI.

-------. 2007. "Choreographing (Against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Cross-Cultural Performance in the Fiji Islands." Paper presented at the annual meeting of theSociety for Ethnomusicology, October, Columbus, OH.

XVI

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

A Community of Sentiment:

Indo-Fijian Music and Identity Discourse in Fiji and its Diaspora

by

Kevin Christopher Miller

Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnomusicology

University of California, Los Angeles, 2008

Professor Anthony Seeger, Chair

Through an historical and ethnographic account of Indo-Fijian music and related cultural

practices, this dissertation examines the co-implicative relationship between music

making and collective identity formation.Indo-Fijians, who compose about 37 percent of

Fiji's current population, descend primarily from colonial-era Indian laborers.

Specifically, I interpret discourses about music and discourses of ramie to query three

broad intersections of musical performance and "community": 1) the "subethnic," in

which the heterogeneous "Indo-Fijian community" negotiates internal difference; 2) the

national, in which fraught social and political relationships between Indo-Fijians and

indigenous Fijians—the majority population—inhibit their co-authoring of the nation-

state; and 3) the transnational, in which global media and diasporic movements engender

XVII

new points of attachment and concepts of community. As a point of focus, my

ethnography explores the folk-based devotional music repertoire performed by Hindus,

the majority Indo-Fijian religious group. This dissertation rests on the claim that musical

performance offers an ethnographically distinct site of cultural production, constitutive

and revelatory of multiple points of suture that inform an individual's sense of self in

society. As a discursive practice, music signals difference, but it also harnesses the

sentiment of attachment to concepts of time and place and points imaginatively at other

possibilities for being. Both in Fiji and in locations of "secondary migration" in Pacific

Rim metropols, musical practices contribute to the internal constitution of communities

and the mapping of their borders. In the context of Hindu practices, this process is

interconnected with a local discourse that places various musical elements into a

hierarchy based on religious efficaciousness (and perceived cultural worth) that I call

"viable authenticity." The three primary discursive sources for viable authenticity in

Indo-Fijian music-culture are "rural memory," which valorizes performance elements

associated with the (indentured) past; "Bollywood," which draws on aesthetics and

ideologies associated with a modern but imagined India; and classicization, which

simultaneously claims the superiority of an ancient Indian past and a global affinity with

the standardized, "elevated" practice of semiclassical and classical Indian music.

XVIII

Section I

Research Foundations

Chapter 1. Introduction

The island nation of Fiji, a former sugar colony of the British Empire, is unique

among its Pacific neighbors for its particular postcolonial predicament. This scattering of

over 300 tropical islands in the South Pacific is today shared between two previously

disparate ethnic groups brought together by the machinations of colonial era capitalism.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Fiji became one of the last colonies to benefit

from the importation of indentured Indian labor, a well-oiled global enterprise that

replaced forced African labor but was itself criticized as a "new system of slavery." In

Fiji, this system provided sugar plantations with Indian labor between 1879 and 1916. As

in other locations of indenture such as Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam, South Africa, and

Mauritius, thousands of Indian laborers decided to remain in Fiji, forging future

generations that eventually surpassed the indigenous Fijian population in size. On the

plantations, the social hierarchies of caste lost their relevance, and the laborers developed

a koine language called Fiji Hindi that is still spoken today. In the 1930s, this "Indo-

Fijian" population was joined by an entrepreneurial class of immigrants from India,

especially from the states of Punjab and Gujarat.

After independence in 1970, the two main ethnic groups—the indigenous Fijians

and the Indo-Fijians—constituted the bifurcated population of the young nation-state, and

it was not long before tensions boiled to the surface along lines of economics, culture,

and politics. Fears of an "Indian takeover" contributed to a series of political coups in

1987 and 2000, the latter of which deposed Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first Indo-Fijian

prime minister. Feelings of political marginalization, a lack of access to land ownership,

and the search for greener economic pastures all contributed to large-scale Indo-Fijian

emigration from Fiji to the urban centers of the Pacific Rim. As a result, the current Indo-

Fijian population that remains in Fiji has declined to about 312,000, or 37.6 percent of the

total population, and this number continues to drop. The indigenous Fijian population has

risen to approximately 474,000, or 57.3 percent of the total population, which remains

just under one million.1

Based on thirteen months of fieldwork in Fiji (2004, 2005-06), one month in New

Zealand (2006), and intermittent research in California and with online communities

(2004-2008), this dissertation examines the intersections of musical performance,

identity discourse, and community formation that occur along the circuitous path of Indo-

Fijian history from indenture to secondary migration. The "Indo-Fijian community," as

an imagined construct, contains significant internal diversity, including differences in

region of origin (North Indian or South Indian), religion (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or

Christian), and immigration history (indentured or "passenger" migrant)—distinctions

that I refer to as "subethnic" in regard to the "Indo-Fijian" imaginary. Specifically, I

focus on the musical practices of Hindus, the majority Indic group claiming 76 percent of

Like most contemporary scholars, I use the term "Indo-Fijian" in reference to the Indic population of Fiji;the most common alternative is "Fiji Indian." In a survey about ethnic labels conducted by The Fiji Times,37 percent of Indo-Fijian respondents self-identified as "Indo-Fijian," followed by "Indian" (24 percent)and "Fiji Indian" (19 percent) (Tebbutt Poll, The Fiji Times, 1 September 2004). I refer to the aboriginalFijian population as "indigenous Fijian," which is the commonly used term. In everyday practice in Fiji, anIndo-Fijian is known simply as "Indian" (Hindustani in Fiji Hindi, kai india in Fijian) while an indigenousFijian is known simply as "Fijian" (kai viti or taukei in Fijian). The term "Indo-Fijian" is controversial withsome indigenous Fijians because it contains "Fijian" as the primary noun rather than an adjective (seechapter 8). "Fiji Islander," the only term for all citizens offered by the current constitution of Fiji, is rarelyused.

the Indo-Fijian population. As discussed herein, music making is indispensable to the

practice of Hinduism in Fiji, as the very act of singing forms an intimate bond between

the devotee and the divine, and Indo-Fijian music in the context of Hindu worship is

notable for its participatory quality. For example, groups of amateur singers (called

"mandalis") typically meet on a weekly basis to sing and recite from the Rdmcaritmdnas,

the Hindi retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana epic by Goswami Tulsidas, which is the

central text of the devotion-oriented, North India-derived Hinduism of Fiji.

Approximately 75 percent of the indentured laborers to arrive in Fiji originated from the

rural hinterlands of modern-day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in northeastern India, while the

remaining 25 percent derived from comparably rural areas of southern India. Most Indo-

Fijian devotional music genres developed from North Indian precedents (such as lok git,

cautdl, and bhajan) and retain the qualities of folk music (desi git) in terms of musical

style, instrumentation, text, and performance context.

Beyond its functional role in Hindu practices, musical performance offers an

ethnographically distinct site of cultural production, constitutive and revelatory of

multiple points of attachment that inform a devotee's sense of self in society—variously

defined as selfhood, ethnic identity, or community. In fact, this dissertation rests on—and

endeavors to support—the claim that music making, as a cultural activity with a unique

set of inherently discursive attributes, forms cultural modes of belonging as much as it

reflects them. From this point of departure, this dissertation utilizes ethnography,

historiography, and musical analysis to examine the role of music in the everyday

practices of Indo-Fijians and to address the following questions regarding musical

performance and ever-expanding concepts of place or community: What role did music

and related forms of cultural performance play in the historical (trans)formation of the

Indo-Fijian ethnic identity during Fiji's colonial period? In contemporary Fiji, how does

music making relate to struggles of religious authority and map religious communities?

How do individuals and groups, through their musical practices, negotiate issues of

subethnicity—i.e. intracultural difference—and reconcile these perceptions of difference

with the notion of community? What role does musical performance play in cross-

cultural outreach and national reconciliation? How do Indo-Fijian musicians and related

performers, as key agents of representation, contribute to the authoring of national

identity? How does the consumption of India-based transnational media contribute to (or

challenge) local Indo-Fijian music production, and what points of attachment do these

ties of consumption reveal? And finally, as Indo-Fijian "twice migrants" populate the

metropols of the Pacific Rim, what role does musical performance play in sustaining a

sense of community in the context of dislocation?

Does "Indo-Fijian Music " Exist?

Although the questions listed above are foundational to my dissertation, one

query—presented to me early in my research—is, admittedly, the most fundamental of

all, as it questions the very existence of my subject. Following my preliminary fieldwork

trip to Fiji, I joined a website membership group called Indofiji.com, just one of many

such sites designed to link Indo-Fijian communities in diverse places. I posted an

announcement on an online forum stating that I planned to study Indo-Fijian music and

requested feedback and comments. The replies came in, each variously supportive and

many suggested specific genres to look into or particular singers to look up. And then

this: "Come on you guys, there is no such thing as Indo-Fijian music. It's basically a

rehash of Bollywood stuff [Hindi film music]. Those folk songs that they sing at

weddings, Holi, bhajans, etc.—that is whatever was brought over by those Girmityas

[Indian indentured laborers]. They Indo-Fijians [sic] don't have music of their own."

This comment generated a healthy and fascinating discussion about whether or not Indo-

Fijian music exists. The original poster elaborated on his position, stating that there is no

Indo-Fijian music because none of the genres present in Fiji depart greatly from those

carried over or imported from India, and furthermore, none of the genres demonstrated

any mixing of Indian and Fijian traditions. He emphasized this criterion through a

comparison with Indo-Caribbeans, who have developed a uniquely diasporic genre called

"chutney"—a mix of calypso, soca, Bollywood, and bawdy Indian wedding songs.

I found a similar discourse uttered a quarter of a century earlier in the transcript of

a radio address by the Indo-Fijian poet and scholar Raymond Pillai. During the course of

discussing the topic of "culture and the Fiji Indian," Pillai offers his opinion on "local

Indian music":

Here I must concede that the influence of popular film music has beenutterly devastating. We have hardly any Fiji Indian music that can bedescribed as distinctively local. We can of course point to such forms asqawalis, tambura bhajans and chautal singing, but these musical formsappeal to limited audiences, and I do not see them increasing in popularityin the near future. This position will always continue if we insist on

2My emphasis and bracketed explanations. I assume this poster is male based on his alias. Posted on

Indofiji.com, http://www.indofiji.com. Accessed December 11, 2004.

looking to Indian film music for our models. That is why it is all the moreurgent that we Indians should identify more closely with Fiji, and evolvecultural forms that we can claim as truly our own. (1978: 3)

Although articulated differently, both critics launch a similar attack on Indo-Fijian music,

depicting it as simultaneously burdened by a static traditional repertoire (pointing to the

past) and corrupted by the influence of popular Hindi film music (as an index of the

commercial frivolity of modernity)—neither of which creates anything new born of the

Indo-Fijian experience. Like most interlocutors featured in this dissertation, these

observers situate their understanding of what constitutes Indo-Fijian music within their

conception of what constitutes the "Indo-Fijian" identity, and both processes reveal an

imaginative engagement with place. In the quotes above, India and Fiji—as partly

imagined, partly cartographic places—loom in an ambiguous, tense relationship, the

former serving as motherland and the latter as homeland. The South Asian diaspora

enters, too, with its Caribbean chutney, a parallel world of "colonial cousins."

Discoursing about Indo-Fijian music, therefore, invariably invokes concepts of

places and the people that occupy these places. Similarly, the performance and

consumption of music enact connections of sentiment that invaluably inform Indo-Fijian

selfhood and notions of community. It may come as little surprise that I am in the camp

with those who believe that Indo-Fijian music does exist, if only as the music that is

performed and consumed by Indo-Fijians. This dissertation is ultimately my own

discourse—my own story—about what Indo-Fijian music is, but more importantly it is

about what musical performance does and what it means.

Aims of this Dissertation

In pursuing the multiple themes of this dissertation, I have authored a work that is

part history, part religious study, and part political analysis, but it is firstly a musical

ethnography of the "Indo-Fijian community," both in Fiji and in locations of secondary

migration. Before describing what this dissertation endeavors to do, I must clarify what it

does not. Although I draw heavily from scholarship in South Asian studies and South

Asian diaspora studies, I do not prioritize the issue of comparison between Indo-Fijian

music and music-cultures in India or other locations of the South Asian diaspora.

Following the lead of diaspora scholars such as Steven Vertovec (2000), I have sought to

avoid the inclination to assess cultural formations in the "Hindu diaspora" vis-a-vis the

standards of Hindu India (even if my field consultants do). Where relevant, however, I

invoke comparative and contextual information from India and its diaspora.

Although designed to stand on its own, I conceive of this dissertation as situated

within the scholarly canon of the South Asian diaspora, particularly those studies focused

on music-cultures. It follows that my own scholarly focus necessarily highlights the

cultural lives of Indo-Fijians to the exclusion of other ethnic groups in Fiji including

indigenous Fijians, who are notably absent from this dissertation except for chapters 3

and 8. Moreover, the particular configuration of this project locates and privileges certain

communities and musical practices within the Indo-Fijian population, relegating others to

the margins. My decision to focus on the North India-derived musical practices of Hindu

Indo-Fijians is based partly on the majority status of these practices, partly on the

pragmatic need to limit the scope of my research, and partly on the precedents of

previous scholarship, both in Fiji and in the South Asian diaspora. Ultimately, I selected

an ethnographic focus that best suited my research questions as listed above.

The aims of this dissertation, following from these research questions, fall into

three broad categories:

1. To contribute to ongoing scholarship on music making and identity discourse.

This aim begins with the claims that individuals make about the relevance and

power of music in their own lives and in society and extends to musical

performance itself as a site of identity discourse. Central here is the idea of

collective identity, particularly when articulated as "community," and the

concomitant negotiation of subethnic difference.

2. To contribute to the theorization of music and the nation-state. This area of

inquiry carries the idea of community to the level of the nation-state, where it

intersects with the representative practices of music, dance, and cross-cultural

performance. The analysis of collaborative or crossover performance in

postcolonial, multicultural nation-states has the potential to reveal much about the

process of nation making and representing ethnicity.

3. To contribute to the growing literature on music and transnationalism. Like

nationalism, this area of inquiry expands the notion of community to its

imaginative limits through flows of music with actual diasporic bodies,

transnational media, and the virtual communities of cyberspace. The key here is to

focus on how individuals or communities in various locations make transnational

music sources locally meaningful.

Fieldwork Locations

As further described herein, I situated my Fiji-based fieldwork on the island of

Viti Levu, the largest and most populated island in the Fiji group (see Figure 1).

Specifically, I based my research in Lautoka, a city of commerce and industry with

approximately 53,000 inhabitants. Developed around Fiji's largest sugar mill, Lautoka

services the surrounding rural sugarcane areas of western Viti Levu, an area with a high

concentration of Indo-Fijian settlements or "villages." A base in Lautoka thus provided

me with dual access to musical practices in an urban center and the surrounding rural

areas. I chose this "western side" of Viti Levu in part because of the uniquely close

relationships here between Indo-Fijians and indigenous Fijians, who generally

demonstrate more segregated behavior in other parts of the islands. I also made frequent

trips to other locations around Fiji including Suva, the capital located in southeastern Viti

Levu. My fieldwork locations in the "Indo-Fijian diaspora," the Pacific Rim locales of

secondary migration, included Auckland, New Zealand—the primary case study for

chapter 9—and the United States, particularly the cities of Los Angeles and Hayward in

California.

Previous Scholarship on Indo-Fijian Culture

Throughout this dissertation I draw on the work of existing scholarship on Indo-

Fijian history, culture, and politics from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives.

Particular authors or publications are introduced in the relevant chapters, but I begin here

10

0V

Suva

FijiJ

Figure 1: Map of Fiji. Fieldwork locations of Lautoka and Sabeto in western Viti Levu. Maprendered by K. Miller.

with a brief overview of the scholarly corpus that proved most indispensable to my

research. Scholars from the social sciences, particularly anthropologists, have produced

an impressive ethnographic canon on Indo-Fijian culture. Adrian C. Mayer provides a

foundational ethnography through his research on rural Indo-Fijian life during the mid-

twentieth century (1961, 1963). His focus on social organization and religious practices

during a period when the India-born interacted with the Fiji-born is particularly valuable

for its insights. Chandra Jayawardena provides a similar overview of Indo-Fijian culture

based on fieldwork carried out during the 1960s. His contributions cover the

disintegration of caste (1971), issues of kinship and settlement patterns (1975), and the

retention of Indian cultural practices vis-a-vis a comparison with Indo-Guyanese (1980).

11

In the 1970s, Carolyn Henning Brown conducted fieldwork that generated publications

on caste and marriage patterns (1981) and ritual and ethnic competition (1984). During

the same period, Ian K. Somerville, a theologist, composed a Master's thesis on the

Ramayan mandali, the key performance ensemble of Hindu practice in Fiji (1986). I have

in this dissertation gratefully utilized his research and observations.3I am also indebted to

the work of John D. Kelly, who writes about Indo-Fijians and ritual, particularly during

colonialism and the period of decolonization. Various publications analyze the ritual shift

from Holi to Diwali (1988), the interplay of sexual morality and politics during the early

years of Indo-Fijian free society (1991), the political uses and metaphoric power of the

Ramayana under colonization (2001), and with Martha Kaplan, the constitutive power of

legal, ritual, and electoral representation in shaping communities (2001). Like Kelly,

Susanna Trnka based her fieldwork in the peri-urban area of Suva where she focused on

issues of community, the body, and violence after the 2000 coup (2002a). Finally, Manas

Ray (2000), Carmen Voigt-Graf (2004, 2005), and Katerina Teaiwa (2007) have

produced cogent studies on Indo-Fijians, secondary migration, and transnationalism.

The only scholar to publish extensively on Indo-Fijian music and culture is the

linguistic anthropologist Donald Brenneis. In his analysis of musical genres, particularly

qawali (kavvdli), chautal (cautdl), and "challenge songs," Brenneis is primarily

concerned with the transformation of these genres' context and social meaning in the

diasporic setting (1983); the relationship between musical form, local aesthetics, and

I am particularly grateful to Kanti Jinna for providing me with a copy of this rare document. Because thisthesis is generally unavailable, I have quoted from it heavily in this dissertation so as to further disseminateSomerville's invaluable research.

12

psychological theories (1985); and the effect of "non-discursive" features of performance

on the "ethnopsychology" of audience reception (1987). Each of these analytic frames

relates to and informs my central research questions, although my overall approach to

Indo-Fijian music and community differs from Brenneis in at least two significant ways.

First, Brenneis conducted his fieldwork in a small Indo-Fijian village in a rural area of

Vanua Levu, which is the second largest island of the Fiji group and is less developed

than Viti Levu, its larger, more populous neighbor. By choosing a relatively isolated

community, Brenneis was able to focus on internal village relationships, which he

described as strongly informed by egalitarian values. Although the constitutive

performance culture of various concepts of Indo-Fijian "community" remains an

important focus, I am equally interested in 1) the external relations and areas of

intersection between Indo-Fijians and the greater national and political context (i.e.

indigenous Fijians) and 2) the sentiment of connectivity enacted between Indo-Fijians

situated in Fiji and those dispersed around the Pacific Rim. Second, Brenneis conducted

his fieldwork and social analyses during Fiji's early independence era, a political milieu

wholly different from the tense and occasionally violent post-coup era of today.4 The

social and political context of Indo-Fijian music has radically changed in the intervening

years between Brenneis' research and my own. My research questions, theoretical

framework, and methodology, therefore, owe a debt to Brenneis' invaluable corpus but

also engage more recent models in ethnomusicology and the social sciences that deal

4For example, Brenneis' last article on Indo-Fijian music was published in American Ethnologist in May

1987—ironically, the year and month of Fiji's first military coup—yet even here he identifies the"ethnographic present" as "July 1972" (248).

13

with multicultural societies, conflict, representation, and the manner in which these issues

play out through transnational networks.

Dissertation Outline

I have divided this dissertation into five sections. Section I, commenced by this

introductory chapter and continued by chapter 2, provides an overview of my research

foundations including an account of the theoretical perspectives that conditioned my

research and the methodology that I employed to carry it out. As an organizing principle,

I have designed the main of this dissertation, comprising Sections II through IV, to

progress thematically along a path forged by the journeys of Indo-Fijians and their

predecessors: from India to the sugar estates of Fiji; from the estates to the rural plots of

the "free" settlements; from the rural farmlands to the urban settings of Fiji's towns and

cities; and from the shores of Fiji to new locations of secondary migration in the Pacific

Rim. Section II is dedicated to providing the historical and contextual background

required to understand the significance of my ethnographic analysis, which follows in

Sections III and IV. This begins with a general history of Indians in Fiji, including their

regional origins in India and their lives under the indenture system, colonial rule, and the

politically tense post-independence era (chapter 3). The two chapters that follow focus on

Hinduism in Fiji as a primary context for the musical practices discussed in later sections.

The first (chapter 4) chronicles the rise of Sanatan Dharm (the "Eternal Religion") in Fiji,

the orthodox practice of Hinduism followed by the majority of indentured laborers. This

chapter also describes the musical practices associated with Hinduism during the colonial

14

period and discusses their significance. The second (chapter 5) presents a broad,

descriptive overview of Hinduism in contemporary Fiji including its basic tenets, rituals,

places of worship, revered individuals, and sacred texts, the last being dominated by the

Rdmcaritmanas, Tulsidas' vernacular Ramayana.

Section III comprises two lengthy chapters that introduce my ethnographic

materials and analyses on Indo-Fijian music in western Viti Levu, Fiji. The first (chapter

6) focuses on Hindu musical practices in the rural context and examines the role that

music makers—both individuals and groups—play in mapping their own communities.

The main performance genres analyzed in this chapter are puja, Ram katha, and "Faag"

singing, also known as chautal. The second (chapter 7) follows these traditions to the

urban context of Lautoka where many of the same musical practices continue, although

with altered significance. The primary examples here—Ramayana recital, Ramlila,

tambura bhajan, and qawali—are critical sites for the negotiation of community,

particularly in terms of subethnicity. The chapter concludes with my interpretation of a

local discourse that places various performance genres, aesthetic choices, and musical

sources into a hierarchy based on religious efficaciousness (and perceived cultural worth)

that I call "viable authenticity."

Section IV, which also includes two chapters, moves beyond the internal analysis

of the Indo-Fijian "community" to explore the role that Indo-Fijian music and related

forms of cultural performance play in the arenas of nationalism and transnationalism. In

the first (chapter 8), I focus on the often-strained relationship between Fiji's two main

ethnic groups, the Indo-Fijians and the indigenous Fijians. Through two case studies—an

15

emergent form of multiethnic, collaborative dance and a minority of indigenous Fijian

singers who perform the Hindu repertoire—I examine the potential that cross-cultural

performance holds for ethnic reconciliation and the project of national identity. The

second (chapter 9) follows Indo-Fijian "twice migrants" to Auckland, New Zealand,

where they encounter for the first time their subcontinental Indian "other." Although this

chapter focuses on the intersection of music and transnationalism, the effects of

transnational processes are felt in each chapter of this dissertation. My primary examples

here are the Ramayana recital (in its new context), and the creative consumption and

reimagining of India-based transnational media. Finally, although each chapter contains a

summary conclusion, Section V offers a concluding chapter in which I discuss the

primary themes to emerge from my research and the significance of my findings.

16

Chapter 2. Engaging Theory and Method

This project utilizes several interrelated theoretical frames that engage identity,

ethnicity, concepts of location, and the constitutive and discursive powers of music. My

basic approach follows what Anthony Seeger calls "musical anthropology," which

studies cultural groups from the perspective of musical performance: "Rather than

studying music in culture, a musical anthropology studies social life as a performance"

(1987: xiii). Seeger's emphasis on the performance of social life rests on the notion that

musical practices play a constitutive role in cultural formations and require a focus not on

"social laws" but social processes. This is why starting with the music—conceiving of

musical performance as a point of entry into research—is ethnographically productive. It

is, admittedly, just one of many possible vantage points on larger cultural processes (a

focus on sports in Fiji, for example, would provide its own set of social revelations), but

music offers a discursively unique combination of attributes that operates in society in a

singular way. In the words of Mark Slobin, music is "an extraordinary multilayered

channel of communication, nesting language itself, that primary agent of identity, within

a series of strata of cultural meaning" (1994: 244).

But what is music? Perhaps most famously, John Blacking defines music as

"humanly organized sound" dependent on the capacity for "structured listening" (1973:

10), and I follow this definition with the corollary that what constitutes "speech" versus

"music" will vary from culture to culture (if not listener to listener). My conception of

music in this dissertation is deliberately inclusive and might more accurately be called

17

"music-culture," defined by Slobin and Jeff Todd Titon as "a group of people's total

involvement with music: ideas, actions, institutions, artifacts—everything that has to do

with music" (1996: 1). My ethnographic scope includes not just songs, singers, and

listeners but also associated media, rituals, festivals, dance performances, and theatrical

productions.

Of course this privileging of music, particularly with its expanded definition,

raises certain questions about the ethnographic subject. For example, is the Ramayan

mandali a "religious group" or a "musical group"? It is both; it could not be one without

the other, and each informs the other. We learn things about a religion and its

practitioners through the entry point of its music that we would not otherwise glean.

However, the performance-centered approach of musical anthropology may not be

equally productive for every culture or society. In Fiji, for example, many Muslims

express an ambivalent relationship with music due to prohibitions against it in Sunni

Muslim doctrines. Furthermore, by entering Indo-Fijian culture through its sites of

musical performance I run the risk of emphasizing those areas of culture that employ the

most chanting, singing, and dancing. For example, if I were to assign importance to

particular Hindu festivals based solely on how much singing they require, Holi and Ram

Naumi would dwarf Diwali, Fiji's official and most-anticipated Hindu holiday. The key

lies in the questions we ask, and I feel confident that the central aims of this dissertation

justify and benefit from a music-centered approach to Indo-Fijian history and culture.

This chapter presents an overview of the theoretical foundations that informed my

original research questions and guided my analyses, and it reviews issues regarding

18

methodology. It is important to point out that theoretical perspectives and contextualizing

literature reviews are not solely confined to this chapter. For example, chapter 5 discusses

scholarship on the Hindu diaspora, issues involved with Sanskritization, and my

definition of ritual; chapter 7 includes some background on gender analysis and a

discussion of classicization; and chapters 8 and 9 respectively offer more scholarly

perspectives on nationalism and transnationalism. The theory discussed below tackles the

most pervasive, overarching themes of this dissertation: music and its co-implication with

identity discourse, community formation, and issues of representation.

Defining Identity, Defending Identity

During the course of my fieldwork, I encountered numerous articulations of

attachment or identification that signaled various categories of identity: individual,

ethnic, subethnic (e.g., religious, particular Indian heritage, etc.), regional, national, and

transnational. But what is "identity" and how is it most productively studied? From the

1960s onward, social scientists increasingly positioned the psychosocial concept of

identity near the center of their research paradigms where it occupies a place of both

fascination (as a concept believed to be fundamental to society) and frustration (as its

fundamentality proved to be matched by its elusiveness). Two definitions from

ethnomusicology literature demonstrate the negotiation of this tension. Martin Stokes

describes identity as "the cultural mode of imagining belonging, or shared substance,

whether this is predicated on race, ethnicity, nationhood, class, gender or sexuality"

(2003: 246). Thomas Turino, influenced by practice theory, offers this definition:

19

"Identity is the representation of selected habits foregrounded in given contexts to define

self to oneself and to others by oneself and by others.... Social identities are based on

recognized similarities within groups, and differences from others, which in turn serve as

the basis of collective feeling and action" (2004: 8). Stokes' definition is noteworthy for

its emphasis on "imagination" and "belonging" while Turino's highlights

"representation" and "habits," and both authors stress the role of recognizing "similarity"

and "difference."

Approaches to group identity in the social sciences tend to fall into two

categories: the primordialist/essentialist perspective that posits a foundational, immutable

identity that is expressed or symbolized through cultural activities, and the constructivist

perspective that claims that identities are plural, contingent, fluid, and constituted

(although never "completed") through cultural processes.5 Seeger's musical

anthropology, with its emphasis on the productive role of performance, intersects nicely

with the constructivist approach, as both reflect the processual turn in anthropology and

cultural studies. Stuart Hall, for example, claims that identity must be conceived as "a

'production' which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within,

not outside, representation" (1990: 223). Musicologist Simon Frith echoes this post-

structuralist perspective, reiterating that identity is not a static thing but a process, and

"making music isn't a way of expressing ideas; it is a way of living them" (1996: 111). In

sum, all three authors challenge the notion of a homologous relationship between group

identity and expression by suggesting that the former does not precede the latter: group

This disambiguation owes a debt to previous reviews of identity within ethnomusicology, includingStokes (2003) and Rice (n.d.).

20

identities become so only through cultural activity and a corresponding discourse of both

moral and aesthetic assessment. Timothy Rice describes this process as "authoring the

self through music" (n.d.). Ultimately, as Turino observes (and I agree), a thorough

understanding of identity in relation to musical practices requires a utilization (or at least

an acknowledgement) of both the essentialist and constructivist perspectives (2004: 9).

Several voices from within the social sciences question, however, whether

identity is in the first place a productive concept through which to study, understand, and

write about individuals and societies. Several of these criticisms stem from the fact that

identifying non-Western others was originally an act of violence committed by colonial

officials. For example, in their important work Represented Communities (2001), John D.

Kelly and Martha Kaplan critique what they call the "fetishism of identity" in

anthropology. As a part of their response to Benedict Anderson (see below), the authors

suggest that the identity concept as a colonial construct is ethnocentric, and its

employment in anthropology denies individual agency: "applied identity theories can

sanitize the role of the will, both individual and collective, in actual political history"

(Kelly and Kaplan 2001: 72). Other scholars, cognizant of the complexities of

transnationalism in late modernity, caution against the misuse of the terms "identity" and

"community." Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport, in response to the shifting concept of

space in transnational anthropology, contend that: "Collective identities ... whether

defined in terms of nation, ethnicity, occupation or political movement, are all too often

invoked to fill the vacuum of location once filled (literally) by place" (2002: 3).

21

In response to these criticisms, I maintain that despite (or even because of) the

Enlightenment origins and colonial application of the concept, issues of identity play out

in contemporary Fiji in very real ways at the level of political representation and the

official discourse of a "multiethnic" society. Kelly and Kaplan are quite right to caution

against the imposition of identities on subaltern subjects (and to suggest that we focus on

the ways that subjects evade or resist these impositions), but we must concede that the

language of identity politics ("self," "community," "Hindu," "Indian," "Fijian," etc.) is

now the discursive currency of our field consultants. Although these critics claim that it is

harder work to limit the use of the term "identity" than to banish it from scholarship

altogether, I suggest that we cannot afford to exile the term when it forms such an

irreducible part of our subject's discourse. Writing about identity, therefore, becomes a

matter of informed use and critical interpretation. Borrowing from the definitions above, I

conceive of identity in terms of an individual's sense of attachment to or belonging with

a set of phenomena (such as places, ideas, artifacts, etc.) and the recognition that other

individuals subscribe (affectively) to similar sets of phenomena. The key mechanisms are

the negotiation of difference (and sameness)—although not totalized to absolutes—and

(as described below) the employment of the subject's productive imagination.

Turning to Community

In the chapters that follow, I write of identity most often in its collective form

defined as "community." As an imaginary construct, community is, like the individual

identities that compose it, a continuously shifting, conditional entity. As a heuristic

22

device, the term denotes groups of varying size that share a common point of attachment

based on a particular, definitive criterion. I employ "community" along a continuum of

specificity ranging from smaller, face-to-face collectivities (such as the rural Indo-Fijian

"village") to larger, wholly imagined entities (such as the "Indo-Fijian transnational

community"). In recent years, ethnomusicologists, like other social scientists, have

sought an approach to studying collectivities like community that acknowledges the

subjectivity of the individual. For example, Rice's "subject-centered" musical

ethnography endeavors to bring narrative coherence to the "complex and seemingly

fragmented world" of late modernity through studies focused on the "interaction of

people occupying slightly different subject positions but interacting in time and place"

(2003: 157). The "subject" of each subject position in this model is understood as an

inherently social self, making the interpretation of his or her musical life and experiences

ethnographically productive. Each subject, therefore, has the potential to reveal the link

between the individual and the collective through interrelated articulations of time,

location, and meaning (which Rice couches in the term "metaphor"). During the course

of my fieldwork, I found Rice's explication of the subject's relationship to concepts of

place and time illuminating.

There are three conceptions of community that emerged as the most salient in this

dissertation project: ethnic (particularly the subethnic), national, and transnational. In its

classic definition, the parameters of "ethnicity" include "racial" uniqueness, territoriality,

economic base, religion, aesthetic cultural patterns, and language (De Vos 1995).

Following the lead of Fredrik Barth (1969), research on ethnic communities must be

23

cognizant of the means by which groups construct and maintain the borders of their own

ethnicities and their motivations for doing so. Much like identity in general, this process

tends to occur vis-a-vis other ethnic groups. Taking the "Indo-Fijian community" as an

imagined, artificial whole, I use the term "subethnicity" to refer to the intracultural

differences contained within the larger group. There are numerous such points of

distinction among Fiji's citizens of Indian descent, but the criteria that articulated most

clearly with musical practices were religion and Indian region of origin. The former

includes the divisions of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian, but also sectarian

distinctions within these groups. The latter refers to the cultural dissimilarities between

Indo-Fijians who trace their ancestry to North India and those who trace their ancestry to

South India, but also includes the descendents of passenger migrants who hailed from the

Punjab or Gujarat.

It is at the national level that the larger "Indo-Fijian community" comes into

being, invoked by the likes of politicians, television news anchors, and dancers in the

tourist industry. It is here in the multicultural fold of a nation-state like Fiji that

essentialist displays of ethnic identity tend to flourish. However, as described in chapter

8, individual artists or groups may perform against static notions of ethnic identity

through musical and choreographic representations that offer a new vision of national

community. As should be apparent, my understanding of community, particularly at the

national level, owes a debt to Anderson's groundbreaking Imagined Communities. In an

oft-quoted passage he suggests that a nation "is imagined because the members of even

the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even

24

hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" (Anderson

1991: 6; emphasis in the original). Following Anderson, Arjun Appadurai writes of a

"community of sentiment," which begins "to imagine and feel things together" through

the flow of electronic mass media across deterritorialized space (1996: 8)—and it is this

phrase that I borrow for this dissertation's title. As Appadurai demonstrates, along with

other scholars including James Clifford, Akhil Gupta, and James Ferguson, the nation-

state can no longer be understood apart from the forces of transnationalism.

In their edited collection Theorizing Diaspora, Jana Evans Braziel and Anita

Mannur define "transnationalism" as "the flow of people, ideas, goods, and capital across

national territories in a way that undermines nationality and nationalism as discrete

categories of identification, economic organization, and political constitution" (2003: 8).

"Diaspora," they suggest, is a more specialized term referring to the movement of people

across national borders. Theorizing transnationalism engenders a challenge to the culture

concept as isomorphic with geographic space, particularly the nation-state. According to

Clifford, diasporic cultural forms such as art, literature, and music are deployed in

transnational networks and are increasingly defined and understood in contexts of

displacement that transcend place-bound concepts of discrete cultures (1994: 307). The

border-defying, economically linked, and technologically driven complexities of

transnational systems have received various metaphorical treatments from scholars in the

social sciences and humanities. For example, Paul Gilroy describes the black Atlantic as

a "webbed network" connecting the local and the global in ways that challenge

nationalist notions of ethnic absolutism (1993: 29). For Appadurai, diaspora falls under

25

the rubric "ethnoscape," which together with "mediascape," "technoscape," "finanscape,"

and "ideoscape" completes his well-known metaphoric vocabulary for globalization.

Broader in concept than diaspora, the ethnoscape captures the flux of people moving

through a deterritorialized world, including "ethnic groups, sectarian movements, and

political formations [that] increasingly operate in ways that transcend specific territorial

boundaries and identities" (Appadurai 1996: 49).

Social change and cultural transformation, therefore, occurs within

interconnected—not disconnected—space, and as Gupta and Ferguson point out, the

"presumption that spaces are autonomous has enabled the power of topography to

conceal successfully the topography of power" (1992: 8). That is to say, the most

powerful forces acting on local concepts of culture and community may operate not

within national boundaries, but through them. For example, the global reach of Hindi

films and film music, which are based in Mumbai, India, has a critical impact on the

Indo-Fijian sense of self and community, rivaling both locally produced Fijian media and

"Western" media alternatives. Through such attachments, transnational communities find

their moorings in a sea of temporal/geographic concepts, including "host-land,"

"homeland," and "motherland."

Discursive Claims: Productive Dimensions of Musical Practice

It is one matter to theorize that individual and collective identities are fluid,

contingent, and processual; it is another to demonstrate how this plays out in the on-the-

ground reality of our ethnographies. A third task is to elucidate the mechanisms of

26

musical practice that facilitate the "construction" of identities or communities. In a recent

review article critiquing the treatment of identity in the ethnomusicological canon, Rice

notes that numerous authors since the 1980s claim that musical practices prefigure social

identities and play an important role in their formation. "In this context," he writes, "it is

surprising to see how often they fall back into a discussion in which the social identity

already exists, and music's role is primarily to symbolize, or reflect, or give performative

life to a pre-existing identity" (n.d.). Circumventing this slippage between theory and

practice requires a clearly articulated theory about what musical practice actually does in

relation to the self and society.

As a starting point, we should take seriously Hall's claim above that identity is

always constituted within, not outside, representation. The representation itself is, in

other words, productive. Cultural practices like music making represent ourselves to

others, but also to ourselves, "allowing us," in Hall's words, "to see and recognize the

different parts and histories of ourselves, to construct those points of identification, those

positionalities we call in retrospect our 'cultural identities'" (1990: 236).6 Working in

concert with productive representations are productive imaginations, and so music

making becomes a site of subjectification, a semiotic sounding from which we select

what we recognize as our own or wish to be.

As productive representations, therefore, cultural practices are discursive. At one

level, I employ the term "discourse" in this dissertation in the ethnographic sense as a

social practice that occurs between speakers situated in a particular cultural context. At

It is also the productive quality of representations, both semiotic and political, that leads Kelly andKaplan to stress that communities in Fiji are first and foremost represented (2001). See chapter 8.

27

the same time, I maintain an understanding of discourse in Foucauldian terms as

"practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak" (1972: 49). This,

again, highlights discourse as a productive process. Furthermore, in the political project, a

particular discourse may demonstrate a "strategic polyvalence," defying ownership as it

changes "sides" incurring subtle alterations (Foucault: 2003: 76). This process is

particularly evident in the "ethnic reconciliation" discourse discussed in chapter 8, but it

also occurs in other arenas, including contests over religious authority. Specifically

regarding musical practices, discourse operates at two levels: the discourse about music

and the discourse of music (music as a productive representation). A third possibility

accounts for the (theoretical) non-discursive aspects of musical performance.

Local concepts about music's meanings and significance articulated through

language fall under what Rice calls "metaphoric utterances" in his model discussed

above. For Rice, metaphors in this sense are truth-claims "that bring seemingly distant

domains closer together and that organize, and in some cases shift, our view and

experience of both subjects of the metaphor" (2003: 164). Understood as metaphors—

ways of reconfiguring our experience and understanding of the world—verbalized

discourse makes fundamental claims about music such as "music as art," "music as

resistance," "music as commodity"—the list is endless. What musicians and listeners say

about the power of the music they produce or consume is a critical complement to

musical analysis and an essential part of the process by which musical representations are

productive.

28

In musical performance, discourse occurs in a verbalized form in the case of song

lyrics and verbal explication, but it also occurs within the sounds of the music itself.

Understanding this level of discourse requires a turn towards the interpretive approach to

cultural expression associated with Clifford Geertz (1973). Turino presents one of the

more cogent methods for interpreting music at least in part as a system of signs in an

article that revives Charles Peirce's theory of semiotics (1999). For Turino, it is the multi-

componential aspect of music—its capacity for iconic, indexical, and symbolic

reference—that engenders its affective and identity-forming potential. As a simple

illustration, rag bhairav (a musical mode used in Indian classical music) may serve as a

symbol of "morning" due to its extra-musical associations (played at daybreak) if the

listener is culturally conditioned to be cognizant of the association. It is partly this

semiotic quality of music—its ability to point to things or resemble them—that makes it a

productive discursive device. This accounts for music's dual nature of rootedness and

flexibility particularly evident in diasporic and transnational conduits: music is both

deeply evocative of homeland connections of family, politics, and memory as well as

highly viable as an agent in cultural preservation or change in a diasporic setting (Slobin

1994: 244). It is also through music's sign system, in combination with its verbalized

discourse, that the internalized sentiments of collective identity receive an outward form,

constituting a "community of sentiment."

In an earlier publication, Turino defines discourse as "both the style and the

content of the articulation of ideas and internalized dispositions in the full range of

semiotic codes available (speech, music, gesture, etc.); it is not restricted to language"

29

(1993: 269). Contained within this definition is a reference to the habitus, that "system of

structured, structuring dispositions" located in the mind of the individual, operating in a

dialectic relationship to the external world (Bourdieu 1990: 52). By emphasizing what is

"experienced" over what is communicated, Bourdieu's practice theory holds the potential

to address the "non-discursive" aspects of musical performance. Theoretically,

individuals in society acquire certain cultural knowledge implicitly through the

"internalization" of external conditions, generating behaviors (such as musical practices)

that are externalized in return. The dialectic continues when, without reference to

language, the externalized forms become new models for shaping internalized

dispositions.7 The actual effects or manifestations of this type of feedback system,

however, are more difficult to detect through ethnography since by definition they bypass

semiotic expression.

In the course of my research, my analysis and interpretation of field consultants'

discourses about music, their discourses through music, and their more deeply inscribed

musical dispositions consistently led me to an overarching discursive category that I call

"viable authenticity." In a brief definition, viable authenticity is the subjective quality of

a musical practice, style, or genre that, through the support of a particular discourse,

claims a heightened efficacy in the context of religious practice. As described herein, the

three primary discursive sources for viable authenticity in Indo-Fijian music-culture are

the discourse of "rural memory," which valorizes performance elements associated with

the (indentured) past and rural settings; the discourse of "Bollywood," which draws on

In addition to Turino, the idea of combining an interpretive approach with practice theory to address thediscursive and non-discursive aspects of music follows the work of Jane Sugarman (1997: 22-30).

30

aesthetics and ideologies associated with a modern, but imagined India; and the discourse

of classicization, which simultaneously claims the superiority of an ancient Indian past

and a global affinity with the standardized, "elevated" practice of semiclassical and

classical Indian music. The "authenticity" of each position derives variously from

continuity with the past, autonomy from commercialism (or conversely its embrace), and

the inherent merit of artistic expression, but each draws its fundamental power from an

engagement with place: India, variously imagined. Although I focus on a "traditional,"

albeit uniquely Indo-Fijian collection of musical practices, the history of this music is no

less dynamic and its engagement with modernity no less complete.8 Indeed, it is the

composite character of these musical forms that indexes multiple points of attachment

and possibilities for being that musicians and listeners negotiate through the discourse of

viable authenticity. More than religious authority is at stake for, as we heard in the

debates that introduced chapter 1, the contest over what constitutes Indo-Fijian music

collapses with the contest over what constitutes the Indo-Fijian identity.

On Methodology

In its ideal form, research on diasporic or transnational communities requires

multiple ethnographic field sites. "Multi-sited research," writes George E. Marcus, "is

designed around chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or juxtapositions of locations in

which the ethnographer establishes some form of literal, physical presence, with an

This same point is made elegantly by the anthropologist Kirin Narayan based on her experience with thefolk music of elder women in village India. Their songs, she states, "can be revisioned as irrevocablyhybrid and fluid forms rather than as tokens of a frozen, authentic culture associated with a monolithic'folk'" (1996: 211).

31

explicit, posited logic of association or connection among sites that in fact defines the

argument of the ethnography" (1995: 105). In the case of my project, the connectivity of

my fieldwork sites—Fiji, New Zealand, and the United States—renders each site a

"translocality" (Appadurai 1996). As ethnographers, we access these points of

interconnectivity through our field consultants' experiences of travel but also through

their consumption of transnational media and their imaginative inscription of a place in

their collective experiences. Another indispensable key to transnational research is virtual

ethnography in cyberspace among the hundreds of internet websites that connect the

global Indo-Fijian community through every conceivable facet and subdivision of group

identity. In terms of methodology, this is still relatively new terrain for the social

sciences, but the ethnomusicologist Rene Lysoff has addressed the particular issues

related to studying music communities online: "Internet communities have emerged,

despite temporal and spatial displacements, because they are formed entirely out of social

relationships that are very real to members—relationships emerging out of

communication, exchange, common interests and purpose, and mutual commitment"

(2003: 256).

In terms of my "literal, physical presence" in the fieldwork locations of Fiji, New

Zealand, and the United States, I entered the field cognizant of a paradigm shift that has

occurred within anthropology and ethnomusicology over the past two decades. This

"crisis of experience in fieldwork" is predicated on the claim that "a shift has occurred

which places field relations at the centre of the epistemology of the fieldwork project"

(Hellier-Tinoco 2003: 25; my emphasis). In ethnomusicology, the most vocal apologists

32

for this move towards experience in fieldwork—sometimes called the "friendship

model"—are Titon, Timothy Cooley, and Gregory Barz, all contributors to the seminal

publication Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology

(1997). For example, Titon argues for a "new fieldwork" that focuses less on observing

and collecting and more on experiencing, understanding, and advocating (ibid.: 87). This

new fieldwork, he suggests, is emblematic of a (still emerging) period of

ethnomusicology characterized by reflexivity, sensitivity to power relations, sharing

authority and voice with field consultants, deconstructive approaches to boundary

concepts such as race and ethnicity, a narrative style of representation, and an active

involvement as musical and cultural advocates (ibid.: 91). Critically, Titon conceives of

fieldwork relationships as benefiting and transforming both the ethnographer and the

field consultant. While I cannot claim to have lived up to all of Titon's ideals, I

endeavored to base my fieldwork relationships on responsibility and reciprocity.

Although my list of field consultants is long, I gravitated towards a handful of individuals

(and musical groups) with whom I cultivated deeper (and more productive) friendships.

In Fiji, these relationships had to overcome several interpersonal hurdles, including actual

or imagined asymmetries of privilege, economics, and power between my field

consultants and myself.9

In terms of the mechanics of my methodological process, the theoretical

framework detailed above required combining a social interpretation of key rituals and

9As it turned out, my primary mode of reciprocity was to burn DVDs of my fieldwork video recordings for

the individuals or groups featured in those recordings. In many cases, the promise of a DVD copy (alwayshonored) helped me gain permission to make the recording and improved my access to the proceedings.

33

events, a copious number of interviews, and a close analysis of musical performance. As

an entry point to performance, I took private dholak (folk drum) lessons from Surya

Prakash, one of my key field consultants. This training facilitated my participation in

Ramayan mandalis, the primary ensemble type analyzed in this dissertation. As discussed

further, particularly in chapter 7, the pervasive gender segregation practiced in Indo-

Fijian society manifests in the contexts of musical performance (where it is sometimes

challenged). As a result, most of my fieldwork experiences occurred in male domains,

although I sought the input of female field consultants whenever possible. My limited

access to the female domains of music making, as a male ethnographer, contributed to my

focus on male performance practices, such as the Ramayan mandali and tambura bhajan.

Another hurdle was presented by language. Although Indo-Fijians are

comfortable conversing in Fiji Hindi amongst themselves, many feel that it is a "broken

language" and inappropriate for formal situations or for discoursing with outsiders. At the

same time, many feel insecure with their command of Standard Hindi (although it was in

most cases better than mine) and are hesitant to employ it. Add to this the fact that the

majority of Indo-Fijians also speak English. My own training is in Standard Hindi and,

although I made a concerted effort to gain currency in Fiji Hindi, most interlocutors

would respond to my inquiries (in Standard Hindi or Fiji Hindi) through recourse to

English. Ultimately, through a combination of languages and, in some cases, the help of a

translator, I am confident that my field consultants communicated their ideas without

restraint and I received them accurately.

34

During the course of myfieldwork in all three locations I conducted sixty-nine

recorded interviews (and many more not recorded) and produced over 150 hours of video

footage that I supplemented with about twenty-five purely audio recordings and

numerous still photographs. I also purchased local compact discs and cassettes of Indo-

Fijian music for further analysis. In compliance with the policy of the University of

California's Office for Protection of Research Subjects, I asked field consultants to sign a

consent form (see sample in Appendix 1). In the pages of this dissertation, I identify my

field consultants by name only when the material warrants such identification; in some

cases, privacy is respected due to the sensitivity of the subject discussed. I do not employ

any pseudonyms. Quoted statements without references should be understood to derive

from my interviews. Early in my research process, I administered a survey to fifty-five

students of various ethnicities at a teachers' training college in Lautoka (see sample in

Appendix 2). The primary purpose of this survey, which queries respondents' religious

practices and patterns of music production and consumption, was to help me formulate

questions for subsequent interpersonal interviews. Finally, I complemented my

ethnographic fieldwork with institution-based research in archives, museums, and

libraries. Of particular note here is the Pacific Collection of the University of the South

Pacific, the National Archives of Fiji, and the Fiji Museum, all located in Suva, Fiji's

capital.

My experience in the field, particularly in Fiji, was conditioned by the long

shadow of colonialism and missionary work, current perceptions of American economic

and political imperialism, and the challenge of focusing on a politically disadvantaged

35

and increasingly displaced group (the Indo-Fijians) in a nation dominated by an

indigenous Fijian people who themselves feel under threat. Inevitably, my dissertation

became political the moment I decided to focus on Indo-Fijian music. My discourse about

Fiji's history and politics, and particularly my representation of Indo-Fijian field

consultants, requires a deft political sensibility. The Society for Ethnomusicology

recommends that researchers maintain an "awareness of the connection between

proprietary concerns and economic interests, as well as anticipation of future conflicts

that may be caused by one's research activities." Furthermore, the Society asks that

"ethnomusicologists acknowledge that the responsibilities of field research extend

beyond the fieldwork setting and often involve a long-term commitment to the rights and

concerns of field consultants and their communities."10 My ongoing relationship with the

people of Fiji and its diaspora must contend with the fact that advocacy, even coded at

the level of culture (traditional music preservation, representation through publications,

archival donations, etc.), is bereft of any innocence in a nation-state politically defined by

ethnic difference. Although I do not claim objectivity, I have in this dissertation

attempted to represent the perspectives of all Fiji citizens and former citizens accurately

and fairly.

These statements derived from: The Board of the Society for Ethnomusicology, "Statement on EthicalConsiderations," The Society for Ethnomusicology, 1998, http://webdb.iu.edu/sem/scripts/aboutus/aboutethnomusicology/ethicalconsiderations.cfm. Excerpts are from sections II. A. 5 and II. B.; myemphasis.

36

Section II

Context: Indo-Fijian History and Hindu Practice

37

Chapter 3. A Social and Political History of Indians in Fiji

Although this dissertation presents an essentially synchronic ethnography of

contemporary Indo-Fijian musical practices, it is nonetheless permeated by history and in

constant dialogue with the past. The relevance of history to ethnomusicology is today

taken as writ, having achieved the status of "a primary issue, a fundamental process,

[and] a given of music making" in our discipline by the 1980s (Rice 1987: 475). It is my

task in this chapter, therefore, to provide a social and political history of Indians in Fiji—

their origins, indenture, and transformation—as a foundation and foil for the musical and

cultural processes discussed in subsequent chapters. It follows that musical performance

and cultural practices are not the focus of this chapter, but neither are they excluded. Nor

is this the only chapter to contain history. Indeed, the reader could interpret the main of

this dissertation as a spearhead of the past, tapping, in the words of Kay Kaufman

Shelemay, the "potential that a synchronic study holds for illuminating the historical

continuum from which it emerged" (1980: 233).

This chapter has twin aims. The first is to emphasize the historical events of the

Fiji Islands that speak most directly to the overarching themes of this dissertation: the

constitution and contestation of the "Indo-Fijian community," its representation in the

machinations of a multiethnic state, and its inextricable engagement with the forces of

transnationalism. Inevitably, the brevity of this chapter requires a selective account; the

circuitous 129-year history of Indians in Fiji demands a book-length study of its own. My

use of the phrase "social history" is deliberate and signals my focus on the daily

38

experiences, personal perspectives, and societal aspirations of a large strata of Fiji's

population, often supported by oral data and contemporary descriptions. However, this

telling is equally a political history, highlighting the individual leaders and critical events

that shaped the current political reality of Fiji and the communal disposition of its

citizens.

The second aim of this chapter is to interpret the historiography of Fiji itself as a

discourse, joining other voices in this dissertation—theorists, singers, and politicians,

among others—towards the formation, mediation, and representation of social identities.

The earliest sources—histories and public documents contemporary to the colonial

period—pose obvious historiographic problems regarding bias, motivation, readership,

and method. For example, Walter Gill, an Australian sugar mill overseer posted to Fiji

during the late indenture period, published his memoirs in 1970 under the title Turn

North-East at the Tombstone. Gill's invaluable account abounds with remarkable

episodes of Indian life on the sugar plantations, which he delivers with a candor that is

neither dispassionate nor unsympathetic. It remains, however, his perspective, one of

significant, albeit faded, power. A very different contemporary account of the indenture

period, equally vital, is Fijidwip Men Mere Ikkis Vars, or My Twenty-One Years in the

Fiji Islands, published by the former indentured laborer Totaram Sanadhya in 1914.

Sanadhya, a literate Brahman, recorded his own firsthand experiences and observations

of plantation life in Fiji, including a damning account of cruelty and violence at the hands

of colonial and plantation officials. As John D. Kelly has pointed out, Sanadhya's

memoirs, while not disingenuous, were conceived by their author as a polemic,

39

committed to print for the express purpose of steering Indian sentiment toward the

abolition of the indenture system (2003: 7).11

Postcolonial historians of Fiji, dominated by a generation of Indo-Fijian scholars

who came of age during the early independence era, present their own set of issues

regarding historiography. Asesela Ravuvu, an indigenous Fijian academic and politician,

suggests that the apparent lack of indigenous Fijian scholarship lies in the fact that

"Fijians ... do not generally communicate in writing. They listen, observe and

communicate verbally among themselves. Thus their feelings and aspirations are seldom

communicated to the non-Fijian public or international readers" (1991: ix). However

essentialist this reading, it remains that the custodians of Fiji's history are largely Indo-

Fijian and "outside" scholars trained, in both cases, in "Western" centers of education. Of

the former, scholars such as Ahmed Ali, Vijay Naidu, Shiu Prasad, and Rajesh Chandra,

strongly influenced by the "history from below" movement (a la E.P. Thompson),

incorporate oral testimonies into their histories, thus supplementing and challenging

existing histories and assumptions. This oral history, usually gleaned from surviving

indentured laborers late in their lives, provides both new perspectives and new kinds of

information often overlooked by earlier histories. However, the preponderance of Indian

surnames in Fijian historiography raises unavoidable issues of bias, motivation, and

representation given Fiji's heritage of racialized politics. Brij V. Lal, one of Fiji's most

prolific historians, confronts these issues in the preface to Broken Waves (1992), his

Kelly, an historical anthropologist, presents this critique in his introduction to his translation (with UttraKumari Singh) of Sanadhya's work. Pending more research, Kelly concludes that Sanadhya's descriptionof plantation violence may very well be accurate (2003: 29). Additionally, it is important to note thatSanadhya authored this work after returning to India in collaboration with Benarsidas Chaturvedi, whocommitted the former's oral recollections to paper (ibid: 6).

40

history of twentieth-century Fiji. Engaging Fiji's turbulent history, he writes, is for him a

"journey of self-exploration" undertaken not with pristine objectivity, but with "critical

attachment" (xv, xvii).12 Finally, we must also acknowledge the fact that many of Fiji's

historians become a part of history themselves through participation in Fijian politics. To

give just two examples, Ali was twice elected to Parliament, including a stint in Rabuka's

post-coup administration, and Lal served on the three-member review commission that

produced Fiji's restorative 1997 constitution.

The following history of Indians in Fiji should thus be read as an assemblage of

discourses produced by the subjects of history, the figures that record history, and, where

relevant, the convergence of the two. I divide this history into sections that cover the

trials of the indenture period, the progress of the post-indenture and early independence

periods, and the recent political history of coups, unrest, and emigration. However, I

begin with an analysis of the social and demographic origins in India of Fiji's indentured

laborers, the heritage claimed by the majority of Indo-Fijians living today.

The Social and Demographic Origins of Indo-Fijians

The British system of indentured labor, the mechanism that would deliver

approximately 60,965 Indians to the shores of Fiji, had reached its peak of productivity

by the time the isles entered the Empire in 1874. The scheme was Britain's response to

the acute labor shortage suffered by its plantation colonies after the emancipation of

12I do not mean to imply here that "Western" scholars (including myself) are somehow objective witnesses

to history—far from it. I only point out that the Indo-Fijian dominance of local historiography carriesunavoidable political consequences in a volatile, ethnically polarized state.

41

African slaves in 1834. Turning to India, itself a longtime British territory, colonial

officials devised a system of contract-bound labor designed to provide the Crown's

disparate colonies with a large, immigrant workforce. The design and implementation of

this system required a delicate compromise between the economic demands of Imperial

capitalism and the moral sense of middle-class Britain of this period, the latter largely

influenced by the Utilitarians and Evangelicals (Tinker 1993: 61). Lord John Russell,

Secretary for the Colonies, articulated the unease of this predicament clearly in 1840: "I

am not prepared to encounter the responsibility of a measure which may lead to a

dreadful loss of life on the one hand, or, on the other, to a new system of slavery."13

Ultimately, after experimenting with Indian labor in Reunion and Mauritius in the early

1830s, the British expanded the indenture system to its coffee, tobacco, cotton, and sugar

estates in East and South Africa, the Caribbean, and, after 1879, the South Pacific.14

During the period of recruitment for Fiji, the contractual details of the British

indenture pact stipulated the following. The individual committed to five years of

plantation labor in a particular colony, after which he or she was eligible to return to

India at his or her own expense, barring an extension for absences or desertion. If the

laborer agreed to an additional five years of service, the government would then cover the

expense of the return passage. The indenture workday lasted nine hours on weekdays and

five hours on Saturday, for which males were guaranteed a daily wage of one shilling,

while females received nine pence (Lal 2004a: 38). These were the legal parameters of

Quoted as a front piece by Hugh Tinker (1994).14

The major Indian indentured labor destinations in rough order of arrival are: Mauritius, British Guiana,Trinidad, Jamaica, Grenada, St. Lucia, Natal (South Africa), St. Vincent, Reunion, Seychelles, Surinam,Fiji, and East Africa.

42

the indenture contract as presented to potential recruits in northern and, later, southern

India, but what factors, ultimately, led so many Indians to commit themselves to this

contract, leaving their natal villages for a dangerous journey to perform exhaustive work

on a distant island? And why did so many fail to return to their homeland, choosing

instead to settle permanently in the Fiji colony? The answers to these questions lie, in

part, in the social and demographic origins of the recruits and the historical context of

colonial India in the late nineteenth century.

Since its inception, the indenture system had drawn the majority of its labor force

from the hinterlands of northeastern India via the port of Calcutta. Laborers originated in

modest numbers from the Central Provinces, Rajasthan, and the Punjab, but the

overwhelming majority emigrated from the "Bhojpuri belt," comprising western Bihar

and the eastern United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh, abbreviated as U.P. in both cases;

see Figure 2). During the period of immigration to Fiji, recruitment increasingly focused

on this latter area, with upwards of 90 percent of laborers originating from the United

Provinces during the final years of the nineteenth century (Lal 2004a: 84).15 To

encourage the stability of plantation life, the Colonial Office stipulated that forty women

should accompany every 100 men onto the indenture boats bound for the colonies.

Although the recruiters and emigration agents found it very difficult to meet this quota,

the sum total of laborers indentured to Fiji actually shows a ratio of 43.5 females to every

100 males. In a curious deviation from the social norms of rural India, nearly 64 percent

Impoverished districts in eastern U.P. contributed the most emigrants; these include Basti, Gonda,Fyzabad, Sultanpur, and Azamgarh.

43

of these women emigrated as "single" migrants (ibid: 136). For both men and women, the

bulk of the laborers were young, averaging between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six.

In terms of caste and religious affiliation, the makeup of the indentured

populations tended to reflect the diversity of the districts from which they emigrated. Brij

V. Lai, perhaps the most accomplished scholar of Indo-Fijian history, has identified no

fewer than 260 distinguishable "social groups" that emigrated from India to Fiji during

Colonial India

Figure 2: Map of Colonial India. Includes United Provinces (UP), Bihar, and Madras, also the areas ofGujarat and the Punjab. Map rendered by K Miller.

the indenture period. Based on his analysis of Emigration Passes, Lal collected these

identities into ten categories, the most populous of which are "Middling Agricultural and

44

Artisan Castes" (39 percent of the total), "Low, Menial Castes" (22 percent), and

"Muslims and Groups Predominantly Muslim" (15 percent).16 Another significant

revelation, however, was that high-caste Brahmans accounted for nearly 4 percent of the

indentured labor force, a high figure relative to expectations. The Brahman identification

was destined to survive in Fiji as the most visible vestige of the caste system due to its

custodial role in Hinduism. The appearance of such a variety of castes on the labor ships

is partly explained by an increase in occupational mobility in rural India. By examining

the Indian census of 1911, Lal concluded that "less than 10% of Ahirs, Brahmans,

Chamars, Kewats and Pasis practiced their traditional occupation. The rest had taken to

other occupations, principally agriculture" (2004a: 103).17

In terms of culture, the oral folklore of eastern U.P. in the late nineteenth century

maintained a link with its more regal Rajput ancestry. The Rajputs, a Hindu warrior caste,

moved into this area from Rajasthan in the fifteenth century, displacing local Muslim

leaders and semi-tribal groups. Their deeds and legends entered the folk canon of

wedding songs and epics, forming an important niche in "Bhojpuri culture" during the

indenture period (Henry 1988: 19). Language use at this time was fairly diverse, although

the majority spoke Bhojpuri, Awadhi, or Braj Bhasha, which are all closely related to

Hindi, while Muslims spoke Urdu, which is mutually intelligible with Hindi. Islamic life,

Lal's complete list of categories: Brahmans and Allied Castes (3.71 percent); Kshattriya and AlliedCastes (10.05 percent); Bania and Allied Castes (3.5 percent); Kayasths (0.23 percent); MiddlingAgricultural and Artisan Castes (39.04 percent); Low, Menial Castes (21.93 percent); Tribal Groups (2percent); Muslims and Groups Predominantly Muslim (15.13 percent); Christians (0.05 percent); andMiscellaneous Groups (4.36 percent). He also provides the names of subcastes (2004a: 100-01).

The traditional caste occupations for these groups are as follows: Ahir = cowherd; Brahman = priest;Chamar = leatherworker; Kewat = boatman; and Pasi = toddy (palm wine) maker.

45

influenced by Sufi missionaries, was characterized in this area by its centuries-long

cohabitation with Hindu groups. Finally, the Bhojpuri area in the nineteenth century was

a stronghold of the bhakti (Hindi: bhakti) movement, a popular form of devotional

Hinduism that had originated in southern India and spread to the north during the

medieval period. The bhakti movement emphasized personal, direct devotion to god,

often in the form of Ram or Krishna, through prayer, meditation, and song. The

widespread practice of bhakti in northeast India owes to the advent of religious texts in

local vernaculars, including the poetry of Kabir and Mirabhai. However, the single most

influential text in eastern U.P. was and remains the Ramayana (the epic of Ram),

especially in its Awadhi version known as the Rdmcaritmdnas composed by the

sixteenth-century sage Goswami Tulsidas (see chapter 5).18

In 1903, difficulties in recruiting the required number of laborers from northern

India led the British to open an emigration agency for Fiji in the southern port city of

Madras. Under a less regulated system, millions of South Indians had already migrated to

Ceylon, Burma, and Malaya for short-term labor, and recruits were less eager to migrate

to the outer sugar colonies. Likewise, plantation owners kept a dim view of South Indian

laborers, claiming that they were less physically fit than North Indians and more inclined

to poor social habits (Lal 2004a: 73). While laborers from the north maintained a yearly

majority in the numbers recruited, in the end 14,536 South Indians came to Fiji under the

1 O

A small fraction (less than 01 percent) of North Indian laborers actually originated from Nepal, and theirdescendants comprise a "Fiji-Nepalese" community that today numbers close to 5,000. Members aregenerally scattered throughout the sugarcane areas, although a sizable Fiji-Nepalese community is centeredat Kavanagasau, near Sigatoka on Viti Levu. Apart from an emphasis on the Dasahrd period, which theycelebrate with a Durga puja, the Fiji-Nepalese have more or less assimilated to the cultural and musicalpractices of mainstream Indo-Fijian Hindu society (Griffin 1987: 24).

46

indenture system, forming about 24 percent of the total. Unfortunately, the colonial

records of South Indian emigration were not as thorough as those from the north, but it is

known that most of the laborers were recruited in the southeastern regions of Madras,

North Arcot, Krishna, Godavari, Vizakhapatnam, Tanjore, Malabar, and Coimbatore

(Gillion 1962: 51). The major Dravidian languages—Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and

Kannada—were all represented among the emigrants, although Tamil claimed the

greatest number of speakers. "Dravidian-village Hinduism," the cultural heritage of most

South Indian recruits, maintains a reverence for goddess deities, such as Kali or

Mariamman, who lie largely outside the mainstream Hindu pantheon. Practices

associated with these sects included spirit possession, animal sacrifice, and "torture

rituals" such as firewalking, often accompanied by rigorous drumming and chanting.

To return to the question of motivation, historians of the indenture system

typically attempt to locate agency among the "push factors" and "pull factors" that

influenced the decision of the individual to emigrate. Push factors may be both economic

and personal. Most of Ahmed Ali's interviews with former indentured laborers confirm

that the majority of emigrants had already left their villages in search of work when they

encountered the recruiter for the colonies (2004). Lal suggests that the British penetration

into rural India introduced a cash economy to a landless people, creating a cycle of debt

due to land revenue payments (2004a: 106). Compounded with fluctuating famine and

scarcity conditions in the Bhojpuri area, the commercialization of agriculture led to a

culture of labor circulation between the hinterland, the industries of Calcutta, and the tea

gardens of Assam (Lal 2000b). Migration to the colonies became an extension of this

47

migratory labor culture, and most laborers intended to return to India even as they signed

the contract. This adventurous spirit coupled with desperation lives on in this folksong

fragment collected in North India:

Born in India, we are prepared to go to Fiji,Or, if you please, to Natal to dig the mines.We are prepared to suffer there,But Brothers! Don't make us laborers here.19

Personal or non-economic push factors frequently nudged potential laborers out of their

villages in search of a fresh start. K.L. Gillion, an Australian historian, interviewed

surviving indentured laborers in the course of compiling his important two-part history of

Indians in Fiji. Regarding non-economic push factors, he observed, "A family quarrel

was a common reason given; others included the desire for adventure or to escape

responsibility and burdensome social restrictions, the deaths of parents, or the

undertaking of a pilgrimage...." (1962: 42).

Alongside most accounts of push factors are pull factors designed and instigated

by colonial officials to feed the system with the requisite number of laborers. In this

regard, the system's critics most often cite the unscrupulous tactics of local recruiters,

hired by sub-agents working for the Emigration Agent. More reviled even than the

recruiter, the arkdtl, his unlicensed sidekick, achieved a special degree of scorn in the

collective memory of indenture. The difficulty of meeting the female quota encouraged

recruiters and arkdtls to resort to aggressive, if not miscreant, behavior. In perhaps a

19Lal collected this song as part of his research in Basti, Uttar Pradesh, in April 1979 (2004a: 120). This is

his English translation; the original text was not provided.

48

worst-case scenario, Gillion describes how these local hires stalked young rural women at

religious pilgrimage sites: "Women who became lost or separated were offered assistance

to see some sacred shrine or to rejoin their husbands, but were taken instead to the depot

where, after a few days, the shame of having lived in another man's house sealed their

fates" (1962: 58). More commonly, however, the arkdti misled potential recruits about

the type of work that awaited them on the plantations or suggested that their final

destination was relatively close by. For example, recruits were led to believe that Fiji was

an island near Calcutta, and some emigrants from South India claimed that they had

actually signed up for nearby Ceylon. Nevertheless, in his final assessment, Lai asserts

that the "elaborate machinery set up to govern recruitment was in fact effective, and that

cases of fraud were certainly far fewer than it would appear from impressionistic and oral

evidence" (2004a: 55).

Following their recruitment, laborers generally spent two to three weeks in an

emigration depot at their port of departure where they were subjected to the final

procedural matters of their indenture. The indenture architects designed the depot

complex like a prison so as to isolate the recruits from the surrounding city; under

crowded conditions, the laborers waited in a listless and liminal state. The authorities

encouraged their subjects to break the monotony through games and entertainment, and

there are many reports of people singing to pass the time.

Tinker describes the typical Calcutta depot: "They were surrounded by a high wall to preventuncontrolled coming and going, and contained a number of barracks, with bungalows for the staff (1993:137).

49

Here, hierarchical caste barriers began to break down, a process that would

continue on the voyage and be completed on the plantation. Lakhpat, a former indentured

laborer of high caste, shared his memory about caste pollution in a Calcutta depot with

Ali: "I began to cry. [The inspector] then said that they were not recruiting Brahmans, but

I replied that in any case I had already lost my caste by eating with everybody and that if

21

I returned home now I would be thrown out." Pahalad, another of Ali's informants,

described further examples of pollution: "In the depot all ate together and people slept

with other's wives. I did not like such behavior. Hindus and Muslims and all castes

intermingled. I refused to eat for four days" (2004: 71). Before embarking, the recruits

were medically examined and brought before an emigration official to declare that they

were going to the colony willingly. By most accounts, this agreement was coerced behind

the scenes by the recruiter through intimidation and threats. However, the system did

function as a filter to some degree, as only 66 percent of the recruits registered for Fiji

actually embarked from Calcutta; the others were either rejected on account of their

physical fitness, retrieved by their families, or allowed to escape the depot (Gillion 1962:

36).

Finally, the recruits endured the two- to three-month passage to Fiji aboard large

sail ships that held an average of 600 migrants. The conditions on board, in terms of

comfort, food, and safety, were generally up to the standard of the day, but the Indian

migrants, used to their land-locked villages, varied in their ability to adapt. Hussain, for

example, told Ali: "On the ship we were like cattle. When it swayed we fell on one21

This is Ali's translation of the interview, which he conducted in Hindi (or Fiji Hindi), as are all otherquotes from this source; the original is not provided (2004: 62).

50

another, and our food spilled. Our journey was full of hardship. Some became ill and

died" (2004: 89). Disease, usually cholera, typhoid, measles, or dysentery, was a

consistent problem during indenture migration, and disaster sometimes struck. In 1859,

over 400 migrants died en route to Mauritius when their vessel caught fire. In Fiji, the

tragic wreck of the Syria on the Nasilai reef off of Suva claimed the lives of fifty-six

immigrants in 1884 (Lal 1979). Beyond these corporal risks, however, Hindus from

northern India further eroded their caste status by crossing the prohibited kdld pani, the

"black waters" separating the subcontinent from the pollution of the outer world.

The Experience of Indian Indenture in Fiji: 1879-1920

In 1879, the year of Indian arrival, Fiji marked its fifth year as a colony of the

British Empire. The indigenous population of the islands, artificially unified under the

Union Jack, numbered around 114,000. Sir Arthur Gordon, Fiji's first governor, had

recently established a colonial administration unprecedented in history for its concern for

"native" interests. Gordon did not wish to see indigenous Fijians become landless and

marginalized, like so many Pacific peoples under European expansion. British rule in the

colony, he said, must "seize the spirit in which native institutions had been framed, and

develop to the utmost extent the capacities of the people for the management of their own

affairs, without exciting their suspicion or destroying their self-respect" (Lal 1992: 14).

What the British interpreted as "native institutions," however, were in many cases

regionalized socio-political systems undergirded by a long history of warfare and

struggles for paramountcy (France 1969).

51

This history began about 3,500 years ago with the movement of Polynesian

migrants eastward to the uninhabited islands of the Fijian archipelago, Tonga, and

Samoa. Over time, Melanesian peoples continued to settle Fiji while the latter two island

groups remained relatively isolated. As a result, Fiji became a regional "border area"

populated by people who were Melanesian in terms of phenotype and social organization

while, in the eastern islands, also demonstrating a strong Polynesian cultural influence.

Europeans caught their first glimpse of Fiji in 1643, and by the eighteenth century

lucrative trading networks in copra (dried coconut), beche-de-mer (sea cucumber), and

sandalwood flourished. Christianity, too, came to Fiji, or the "Cannibal Islands" as it was

known, and Methodism in particular spread quickly in the mid-nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, inter-island warfare led regional indigenous Fijian clans (yavusa) to form

alliances with neighboring groups, the most significant of which were called matanitu,

sometimes translated as "confederations" (Lal1992: 5). Powerful matanitu developed in

the Lau Group in the east, on Vanua Levu in the north, and, most importantly to Fiji's

subsequent political history, on the tiny island of Bau off the east coast of Viti Levu in

the center of the Fiji group. An adequate account of the forces that led to Fiji's cession to

the British Empire is beyond the scope of this chapter; most relevant is the role of Ratu

Seru Cakobau, the warlord of Bau. Underpressure from Tongan encroachment,

American debts, and increasing internal warfare, Cakobau agreed to cede the whole of

Fiji to the British in exchange for protection, debt alleviation, and unified rule (Derrick

1957).

52

Thus, Fiji became a British Crown Colony on October 10, 1874 through a deal

with an eastern confederacy of sea-faring Fijians largely at odds with the groups of the

highland interior and westernmost areas. Gordon's rule of law for the colony, however

well-intentioned, effectively reified a select number of indigenous practices into a "neo-

traditional orthodoxy" reflecting the hegemony of the eastern matanitu (Lal 1992: 16).

Many of these innovations would follow Fiji into independence and the twenty-first

century, including the Great Council of Chiefs, an electoral body of hereditary chiefs that

originally served the government as advisors on native affairs. Furthermore, Gordon

declared 83 percent of the total land area inalienable by writ of law, preserving

indigenous Fijian ownership of the great majority of the land. Finally, in 1876, Gordon

introduced the Native Labour Ordinance, designed to shield indigenous Fijians from the

exploitive labor schemes that had followed colonial power in other locales. He stated, "If

the Fijian population is ever permitted to sink from its present condition into that of a

collection of migratory bands of hired laborers, all hope, not only of the improvement but

the preservation of the race, must inevitably be abandoned." At the same time, the new

colony required a labor force to achieve economic solvency. Earlier streams of

Melanesian labor from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Kiribati had dried up under the

authority of the British, who correctly identified this practice as thinly veiled human

trafficking. Seeing no alternative, Gordon drew upon his previous experience in

Mauritius and Trinidad, and approached the colonial government of India with an appeal

for indentured labor. That Indians endured the social transformation of indenture in order

22 From a letter to Lord Carnarvon (Henry Herbert), October 9, 1877 (Lal 2004: 35).

53

to preserve the "Fijian way of life" is an irony that future generations of Indo-Fijians

would not forget.

The first 464 Indian laborers arrived in Fiji aboard the Leonidas on May 14, 1879.

According to eyewitness accounts, the vessel was in a "pest-stricken condition," and six

migrants had died from dysentery while eleven died of cholera.23 By 1900, over 21,000

Indians toiled under contract on Fiji's copra, rice, and sugar cane plantations; the latter

quickly became the colony's most lucrative enterprise (see Figure 3). With the guarantee

of an abundant labor force, the Australia-based Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) Company

agreed to open sugar mills in Fiji in 1882, thus securing the economic viability of the

colony for nearly a century. The CSR Company, as the managerial force of the sugar

estates, would also play an important role in defining the experience of Indo-Fijians for

generations.

Mar ja BhartlvdroMen sum kar dl sejriyd

May death fall on you, RecruiterYou have deprived me of my marriage bed24

These remarks are from: "Arrival of First Indian Immigrants." Fiji Times and Herald. 17 May 1879. Asan historical aside, these indentured laborers were not strictly the first Indians to set foot on the Fiji Islands.An unknown number of Indian sailors called Lascars or "Men of Goa" had deserted British East IndiaCompany ships on visits to Fiji during the height of the sandalwood trade in the early nineteenth century.Traces in the historical record suggest that these men intermarried with the indigenous population andsettled into local life (Clunie 1984: 2). Peter Dillon came across one such deserter named "Joe the Lascar"on neighboring Tikopia Island in 1826, stating that he had "appeared to have forgot the East India dialects,and could not reply to me or my servants, three of whom were his countrymen. His conversation wascomposed of a mixture of Bengalee, English, the Beetee [Viti] and Tucopia dialects" (ibid: 7).24

This is an excerpt from a woman's folksong apparently collected in Rakiraki, Fiji. The translation is byJ.S. Kanwal (1980: 33).

54

Figure 3: Girmitiya Woman. Used with permission from the Fiji Museum.

Life on the CSR Company plantations was, by most accounts, one of degradation,

struggle, and transformation. Colonial and company officials referred to Indian laborers

as "coolies," even in official documents like the 1881 Census. The laborers themselves

claimed the identity of girmitiya, a designation derived from "girmit," their pronunciation

of the "agreement" that had so greatly altered their lives. Housing conditions on the

estates differed radically from communal village life in India, as a minimum of three

adults or one family were made to share a ten-by-seven-foot room in windowless

55

barracks (Mayer 1963: 17). Colonials called these barracks "coolie lines" while

girmitiyas bitterly referred to them as narak (hell), kasbighar (brothels), or "horse

stables"—although according to one laborer, the sahib's horses actually had better

accommodations (Naidu 2004a: 35). Another surviving girmitiya from Labasa (on Vanua

Levu) recounted to Shiu Prasad, "The lines were crowded, and the grounds dirty and

littered with rubbish. Our mud and straw houses in India were far better than the lines....

We were given a small room with three bunks for ourselves and our few possessions and

our firewood. We had to keep our fowls inside at night in case they were stolen. Flies and

mosquitoes stayed with us too" (1974: 4-5). These circumstances affected the health of

the laborers, contributing to the highest infant mortality rate of any colony to receive

Indian labor (Gillion 1962: 107). Although living conditions moderately improved with

the construction of new lines in 1908, the five-year indenture experience remained for

most one devoid of privacy and basic sanitation.

Despite these conditions, the lines were also a place of renewed social and

religious activity, especially during evenings and on Sundays. Totaram Sanadhya recalls

one such Sunday: "At the line someone was singing alha [a narrative verse], some were

reading Ramayan, some were playing khanjaris [timbrels] and one-wires and singing

bhajans, some were swearing, some were welcoming their close friends, some were

gathered in groups teaching tricks" (Sanadhya 2003: 137).25 By most accounts, Hindus

and Muslims maintained good relations and frequently participated in each other's

religious festivals and gatherings (see chapter 4). Officials assigned girmitiyas to living

Translation and bracketed explanations are by John D. Kelly and Uttra Kumari Singh.

56

quarters and field assignments with no consideration for caste, thus continuing the

disintegration of this identifier initiated in the depots and on the ships. In cross-ethnic

relations, however, the British were careful to keep the indigenous Fijians in their

villages and the indentured Indians on the estates; nevertheless, interaction between these

groups was inevitable. First impressions were of mutual fear and, in some cases, mistrust.

The girmitiyas, dubious of the Fijians' appearance, called them junglls ("wild" or

"messy") while Fijians took note of the similarity between the words "coolie" and kuli,

the Fijian word for "dog." There are, however, many accounts of early food trading and

commerce between the two groups, and Sanadhya relates how Fijian visitors bearing food

saved his life during a moment of despair (2003: 146).

Khun paslne se ham bagiydBaithd baithd hukum caldye re bidesiyd

We irrigate the garden with our sweat and bloodAnd the overseer sits and bosses us around26

The plantation owner topped the chain of authority on CSR Company plantations

in Fiji, although he actually had minimal contact with the laborers. The real power laid

with the overseer, usually a young Australian, and the sardar (sometimes sirdar), his

Indian middleman and enforcer. These two figures hold a place of infamy in the girmitiya

oral histories for their abuse of authority, violent punishments, and disrespect for women.

Sardars, themselves former indentured laborers, were additionally accused of favoritism

23

This is another folksong fragment attributed to a gang of female girmitiyas. The translation is by J.S.Kanwal, and it is included in his collection (1980: 35).

57

and extortion. Govind Singh told Ali, "On Sundays, after we had been paid, we met the

sardar and after an exchange of greetings we had to slip a shilling quietly into his pocket.

If we did not then on Monday he made certain that we were given a task that did not

allow us to earn a full days' wage" (Ali 2004: 49). This type of "over-tasking" was one of

the chief complaints lodged by laborers, who were forced to work into the evening hours

to complete their daily assignment and earn their wages. "It is true that there were

perpetrators of atrocities," writes Gillion, referring to overseers, "but these men were

accidental misfits who were eventually detected and fined, imprisoned or dismissed, or

fled the country. Most overseers were not of this class" (1962: 104). Another perspective,

worth quoting at length, comes from Gill, a former overseer:

If we, the overseers and sardars caught up in the rotten system of indentureservitude fathered by Big Business on that most fecund of whores, cheapAsiatic labour, had managed to survive in the tooth-and-claw jungle of thecane game, it was only by out-animalizing the horde of near-human apesin our charge. And I mean apes, because a percentage of the men andwomen, regardless of what they were when they left India, had beenchanged by the terrors and conditions of the sea journey, and their years ofservitude, into something like simian humans. It was also typical of the erathat we white men had no inkling of wrong-doing, and when it came tocoolie eating coolies, the sardar system left the whites, as sadistic bullies,in the infant class. (1970: 65)

In the early twentieth century, a growing coalition of British and Indian moralists

began to speak out against the ills of the indenture system, and they placed women's

issues at the center of their critique. The system required women to do the same strenuous

field labor as men, and officials were known to assign certain women to remote areas of

the plantation, leaving them vulnerable to sexual abuse. Regarding overseers, Colonial

58

Secretary T.E. Fell wrote in 1921, "The brutal man became more brutal, once he found he

could flog and kick with little fear of punishment or retaliation. The lustful man took his

pick of the indentured women, and never realised that their readiness to come at his

pimp's call was the most damning indictment of the whole system" (Lal 1992: 43). The

story of one women came to epitomize the moral failure of the indenture system—as it

was increasingly perceived—and the particular vulnerability of women on the sugar

estates. In 1913, a young girmitiya named Kunti threw herself into a river to escape the

sexual advances of an overseer. Her ordeal and miraculous rescue became a local legend

and her story was widely reported in India (Lal 1985). Kunti also became the subject of

Indo-Fijian folksongs, as the following fragment demonstrates:

Though crushed and broken in the grindstone of oppressionShe did not forsake her modestyThe heroes of Bharat [India] are not so crudeThat they will abandon their Hindu culture27

Criticism of the system was further fanned by reports that the scarcity of women

on the plantation led to sexual rivalry, the root cause of a relatively high incidence of

murder and suicide among girmitiyas in the lines (Naidu 2004a: 79). Ultimately,

European missionary figures such as J.W. Burton, C.F. Andrews, and Hannah Dudley

published damning reviews of the indenture system highlighting the abuses against

women, which they believed to be inherent and impervious to reform. At the same time,

27This is one of three stanzas translated and published by J.S. Kanwal (1980: 43-44). He does not

elaborate on the source of this composition.28

See for example Burton (1910) and Andrews and Pearson (1916). Sanadhya included a letter by Dudleyin Fijidwip Men Mere Ikkis Vars, originally published in 1914 (2003).

59

the abolition of indenture became a significant issue among Indian nationalists, as

demonstrated by Sanadhya's memoirs (2003). Although not strictly an abolitionist,

Manilal Maganlal Doctor arrived in Fiji during this period and quickly emerged as the

leading advocate of Indian rights. As a lawyer and protege of Gandhi, Manilal demanded

that the growing community of "free" Indians in Fiji be treated as equal citizens in the

Empire, a theme that would continue to define Indo-Fijian politics in the years to come.

Under increasing pressure, the government of India closed its ports to indenture in

1917, although this action was also spurred by the travel risks introduced by World War I

(Tinker 1993: 348). The Sutlej V, the last indenture vessel to reach Fiji, unloaded its

passengers on November 11, 1916, and all indenture contracts remaining in Fiji were

cancelled on January 1, 1920. By this time there were over 60,000 people of Indian

descent living in Fiji, many of whom had been born in the colony or living free for

decades. Only about 5 percent of laborers opted to renew their contracts for another five

years, thus securing free repatriation to India; the majority decided to settle in Fiji. The

experience of indenture had transformed the Indian into the girmitiya, creating a new

cultural foundation for the post-indenture period.

Post-Indenture Indo-Fijian Society and the Early Independence Period

By the 1920s, several cultural traits distinguished the Indo-Fijian "community"

from its predecessors in India. For example, a Hindi mixture called "Fiji baat" developed

29Gillion provides the best estimate on the numbers of laborers who returned to India: "Up to 15 May

1957, there were 32,995 repatriates, of whom about 24,000 were born in India; thus, about 40 per cent ofthe immigrants had gone back to India, though some of these returned to Fiji" (1962: 190).

60

as the mother tongue of second- and third-generation Indo-Fijians based on the

dominance of Bhojpuri, Awadhi, and Braj Bhasha dialects among speakers of the North

Indian majority. Later called "Fiji Hindi" or simply "Hindustani," this language became a

true lingua franca among Indo-Fijians, even among those of South Indian heritage, and is

still spoken today (Siegel 1987). Similar Hindi koines developed in other indenture

locales of colonialism, especially the Caribbean.30 Also like most overseas Indian

communities that share Fiji's heritage, the institution of caste was no longer the prime

determinant of social organization and individual status. Nominally, caste differences

survived in the post-indenture period, but "they were shown mainly in a dislike of inter-

caste marriage and as a basis for general prestige, rather than in specific rules of conduct

between caste members" (Mayer 1963: 29).

Nonetheless, as Ali writes, "to flee caste only to land in race was in fact no

escape" (1979: 6). As the Indo-Fijian population continued to grow, it achieved

numerical parity with the indigenous Fijian population, both of which joined the

European population to form Fiji's carefully balanced "three-legged stool."31 Concerned

by the increase in Indian numbers and political interests, some European and indigenous

Fijian leaders began to speak of an "Indian takeover" or the "Indian problem."

Indigenous Fijians turned to the Deed of Cession—as many would throughout the

century—claiming that it enshrined the rights and interests of indigenous Fijians over all

Examples of koines in the Caribbean include Trinidad Bhojpuri and Guyanese Bhojpuri. Jeff Siegelidentifies Fiji Hindi as a koine, which he defines as "a stable linguistic variety which results from contactbetween varieties which are subsystems of the same linguistic system" (1987: 187).

For example, the 1936 Fiji Census recorded these population numbers for the three major ethnic groups:European 2,263; Fijian 49,869; and Indian 48,246 (Lal 1992: 337). The phrase "three-legged stool" appearsmost famously in the writings of Fijian leader Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna (1983).

61

others.32 As early as 1922, Ratu Epeli Ganilau, a chief from northwestern Viti Levu,

stated, "It is safe to anticipate that if Indians in Fiji will be given more political rights

than us Fijians, it will be the commencement of disaffection in our minds, and we

strongly object to being ruled by Indians, as we always have regarded British rule to be

the sole foundation of honour, justice and fairness" (Lal 1992: 90). In response, Indo-

Fijian leaders such as A.D. Patel pointed to Lord Salisbury's so-called "charter of Indian

rights" written in 1875, which concludes that Indian laborers, upon completion of their

contract, "will be in all respects free men, with privileges no whit inferior to those of any

other class of Her Majesty's subjects resident in the Colonies" (Gillion 1962: 26).33

Meanwhile, the Europeans, although small in number, controlled much of the power and

capital. Colonial leaders tended to ally with Fijian chiefs, as the legacy of "benevolent

protectionism" extended into the twentieth century. This racial triptych led Lal to

conclude that the "problem of reconciling these competing, indeed, incompatible,

interests—paramountcy for Fijians, parity for Indians, and privilege for Europeans—is a

central theme of the history of Fiji in the twentieth century" (1992: 16).

With the close of the indenture period, however, most Indo-Fijians were

preoccupied with the more mundane requirements of establishing new settlements and

adjusting to life outside of the lines. Of course, for some this process had begun in the

1880s, and contact and commerce was common between laborers on the CSR Company

32The Deed, as written by Hercules Robinson, does in fact suggest that "the rights and interests of the said

Tui Viti [Ratu Seru Cakobau] and other high chiefs the ceding parties hereto shall be recognized so far as isand shall be consistent with British Sovereignty and Colonial form of government" (Lal 1992: 12).

Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, made this proviso on behalf of the government ofIndia. Gillion suggests that the clause is often taken out of context, and "whether it could be stretched toapply to such matters as political representation or land tenure is, to say the least, debatable" (1962: 27).

62

plantations and "free" settlers.34 A portion of ex-girmitiyas shifted to new occupations,

such as shop-keeping and hawking, a development that alarmed Fiji's European minority.

A letter written by an anonymous European settler published by The Fiji Times on

October 4,1902 reveals a sense of colonial entitlement underscored by an emerging racial

stereotype. The author recommends that Indians be charged double for their shop-keeping

license, a measure that would, in his words, "give the white storeman a fair show to make

a living, and would leave the sinister and insidious Asiatic ample room to exercise his

native skill and display his devious dodges in circumventing all who venture to deal with

him, and in amassing wealth where a white man would go hungry and ragged." In any

case, the majority of ex-girmitiyas remained in agriculture, and the CSR Company, who

continued to dominate Fiji's sugar industry after the indenture period, began leasing land

to Indo-Fijian tenant farmers for growing sugar cane. By the 1930s, however, nearly half

of these farmers leased their land directly from indigenous Fijians, so the government

established a regulating body called the Native Lands Trust Board (NLTB) in 1940. The

majority of Indo-Fijians settled in the sugar cane belts of northern and western Viti Levu

and the Macuata province of Vanua Levu. Rather than forming closely bound village

communities, ex-girmitiyas settled in scattered homesteads. Certain collections of

homesteads took on the identity of an "Indian settlement" by sharing a general store and a

school, and later a Hindu temple or a mosque (Mayer 1961: 26). In the early days of free

settlement, fictive kinship betweenjahaji bhai (ex-girmitiyas who had traveled on the

same ship) functioned in the absence of the extended family structure, and in some cases

34 For example, in 1904 about 10,000 of the 22,700 Indians in Fiji were ex-girmitiyas (Mayer 1961: 7).

63

even Muslims became honorary family members in Hindu households and vice versa

(Chandra 1980: 29). With the establishment of the second and third generations of Indo-

Fijians, the rural household pattern changed from the nuclear family with fictive kin to

the extended family with ties through marriage (Jayawardena 1975).

The composition of the Indo-Fijian population was not, however, solely

dependant on indentured and former indentured Indian laborers. Beginning in the early

twentieth century, a steady trickle of "free" or "passenger" immigrants arrived from

India, especially the Punjab and Gujarat, to pursue economic opportunities in the colony.

These new arrivals tended to maintain personal and business contacts with India, remitted

capital, and often returned to their homelands to get married, usually returning to Fiji

with their brides. Immigrants from the northern province of Punjab, especially the

districts of Jullundur and Hoshiarpur, generally sought agricultural work (Gillion 1962:

133). The earliest arrived in 1904, but the majority of unassisted Punjabi immigration

occurred after 1920. The Punjabis introduced Sikhism to Fiji, their majority religion,

although a few among them were Hindu or Muslim. By contrast, the Gujaratis, from

western India, arrived as jewelers and merchants and quickly established local business

networks with ties to India. The first arrived in 1906, and their numbers steadily

increased through the 1920s (ibid.). Most Gujarati arrivals were Hindu, although they

limited their intermixing with the local communities and even maintained the Gujarati

language. Restrictions placed on immigration in 1930 by the Fiji government effectively

halted further arrivals from India, but by this time sizable Punjabi and Gujarati

64

communities could be distinguished among the Indo-Fijian population, especially in the

growing urban centers of Suva and Lautoka.

Unassisted immigration from India in the first quarter of the century, although

small in number compared with indentured arrivals, provided an important link with

social and religious developments on the subcontinent. Rural ex-girmitiya settlements

developed social and political organizations ranging from harvest gangs to school

committees, both of which proved to be training grounds for future politicians (Chandra

1980: 48). In 1937, Ayodhya Prasad, a schoolmaster from India, helped to found the

Kisan Sangh, or "Farmer's Organization," which would quickly become the "most

successful, organized, and broad-based" Indo-Fijian organization to date (Gillion 1977:

167). The colonial government had a limited influence on the affairs of rural Indo-Fijian

settlements, and local conflicts were often handled by the pancdyat, traditional Indian

mediating bodies that were later transformed into officially recognized Indian Advisory

Committees (Kelly 1991: 171). However, the reinforcement or even reconstitution of

religious and factional identities in Indo-Fijian society relied heavily on the arrival of

individual leaders and missionizing organizations direct from India. Hindu-Muslim

conflict, essentially unknown during the indenture period, emerged during the 1920s as

religious identity coalesced. Under the influence of imams (Islamic spiritual leaders),

Fiji's Muslim community splintered into various sects, including Sunnis (the majority),

Ahmadis, Miladis, Ahl-i-Hadithis, and Tablighis (Ali, J. 2004: 145). Meanwhile, Fiji's

Hindu majority was principally divided by two groups, the reformist Arya Samaj and the

orthodox Sanatan Dharm organizations, both of which sent leaders from India. The Arya

65

Samaj, led in the 1930s by the Indo-Fijian politician Vishnu Deo, argued against what it

saw as archaic ritual in Hinduism and emphasized the Vedas and monotheism. The

Sanatanis, who represented the girmitiyas' bhakti heritage of North India, countered with

the standardization of practices that emphasized the Vaishnava epics, especially the

Ramayana (Kelly 1991). Although the latter had the majority, these two groups shaped

contemporary Hinduism in Fiji through tense public debates, many of which occurred at

song competitions (see chapter 4).

According to Ali and Lal, the political ambitions of Indo-Fijians in the twentieth

century can be summed up by the concepts of izzat (self-respect) and insdf (justice).35

During the interwar years, this translated into a focus on political representation, access

to land, labor issues, immigration restrictions, and education (Gillion 1977: 173). In

1929, under pressure from the government of India, the Colonial Office conceded to give

Indo-Fijians franchise via three seats on the Legislative Council, giving them parity with

indigenous Fijians. Fiji's Europeans, only about 2 percent of the population, maintained

six seats. Indo-Fijian leaders such as Vishnu Deo and A. D. Patel were critical of this

communal franchise arrangement and argued instead for a common franchise (one

person, one vote, one value), but European leaders and Fijian chiefs expressed concern

that a common roll would lead to Indian political domination, and they refused to

compromise on this issue. The standard for racialized voting patterns in Fiji was set,

providing the model for electoral representation thereafter.

35 These are Urdu words used in Fiji Hindi; see Ali 2004: 23 and Lal 1992: 75.

66

Indo-Fijian political action was not confined to the halls of government, as

demonstrated by numerous industrial strikes in the twentieth century, including three

major walkouts in the sugar industry. The first of these, a strike against the CSR

Company in western Viti Levu in 1921, ended when officials employed indigenous

Fijians against the striking farmers, thus stirring racial tensions in the area (Lal 1992: 83).

Each of these strikes, born of izzat and insdf, would fail to secure their main objectives.

They succeeded, however, in renewing the perception among Europeans and indigenous

Fijians that the colony still had an "Indian problem."

By mid-century, Indo-Fijians had surpassed indigenous Fijians in number; the

1956 census recorded 169,403 for the former and 148,134 for the latter. The geographer

John Wesley Coulter, author of Fiji: Little India of the Pacific, described this

development as a "serious blow" to indigenous Fijian morale that "might sound the death

knell of this indigenous race of the South Sea Islands" (1942: 78). Faced with continued

Indo-Fijian demands for increased political representation, constitutional change, and

more secure land leases, the more reactionary members of the government called for their

systematized "repatriation" to India, although this was not supported by the Colonial

Office. A survey administered by A.C. Cato in the early 1950s found that 65 percent of

those indigenous Fijians asked "revealed an attitude of complete intolerance to the

presence of the Indians in Fiji," while 25 percent agreed that the "Indians" could remain

in Fiji "under conditions well controlled and favourable to the Fijians."36 Memories of the

Indo-Fijian-led sugar strike at the height of the war effort in 1943 were still fresh in the

Cato's response group included 64 indigenous Fijians from several parts of Viti Levu and Kadavu,representing occupations from high chiefs to schoolteachers (1955: 17-18).

67

minds of indigenous Fijians, who had dedicated thousands of soldiers to the Pacific

campaign. Indo-Fijians, seeking pay and privileges equitable to European troops, had

enlisted in negligible numbers. This abstention resulted in a military force that was

essentially an indigenous Fijian institution, a fact that would have significant historical

consequences.37

The process of decolonization, initiated after World War II, accelerated in the

1960s. Indo-Fijian leaders led the call for independence just as Britain began to

encourage a greater degree of self-government in its colonies worldwide. Indigenous

Fijian leaders were less enthusiastic about the transition, as their relationship with the

British had been amicable, even warm. "It is the Fijian view," wrote indigenous Fijian

leadership in 1963, "that the possibility of severance of this link with the Crown—a link

forged in a spirit of trust and good will—should never be contemplated." This was also

a period of rapid change—tourism would soon surpass sugar as Fiji's primary revenue

source, urban drift was on the rise, and the University of the South Pacific would soon

make Fiji a major educational hub—and the choice for indigenous Fijians, as interpreted

by their leadership, was one of tradition versus modernization. Rusiate Nayacakalou,

Fiji's premier anthropologist, observed that indigenous Fijians "must now make the

momentous choice between preserving and changing their way of life. The belief that

they can do both simultaneously is a monstrous nonsense with which they have been

37Lal points out that the government was reluctant to recruit Indo-Fijians for the military and this position

was supported by the CSR Company, who did not want to give up its labor force. Lal adds that Indo-Fijianswere neither seditious nor disloyal, but "only the Fijians' exuberant war effort and colonial-Europeanpropaganda made them appear so" (1992: 124).

This quote is extracted from the so-called "Wakaya letter" authored by K.K.T. Mara, P.K. Ganilau, S.Sikivou, R Vunivalu, and G.K. Cakobau. Reprinted in Lal 1992: 189.

68

saddled for so many years now that its eradication may be very difficult to achieve"

(1975: 135). Indeed, the Fijian Affairs Board, heir to the conservative vision of

statesman-chief Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, continued to promote neo-traditionalist policies

based on an idealized communal village past. Meanwhile, Indo-Fijians had for decades

embraced commercial agriculture, business enterprise, and higher education. A common

axiom holds that Indo-Fijians prize education just as indigenous Fijians prize land, and

statistics showing higher Indo-Fijian achievement in education and professional

occupations would seem to support this perception (Lal 1992: 227). Thus, as the British

withdrew from Fiji, their legacy of divide-and-rule style colonialism revealed a highly

segregated nation entrenched in race-based social programs and political parties, and

divided in terms of access to land ownership and occupational ambitions.

On October 10, 1970, the ninety-sixth anniversary of Cession, Prince Charles

declared Fiji an independent dominion of the Commonwealth. The independence era

began on an optimistic note as Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Fiji's first prime minister, told

the celebrants: "We are a community of many races with different cultures, customs, and

languages. But the things that unite us far outnumber those on which we differ" (Sharma

1987: 212). Indeed, Ratu Mara, who would be a key political figure in Fiji for the next

three decades, dedicated himself to the idea of a multiethnic nation, maintaining a healthy

respect for democracy even when the votes stacked against "Fijian interests." Siddiq

Koya, an Indo-Fijian and a Muslim, led the opposition in Parliament as leader of the

National Federation Party (NFP), an Indo-Fijian dominated coalition formed in 1968. The

NFP and Ratu Mara's Alliance Party enjoyed a congenial, cooperative relationship during

69

the early years of independence, clashing loudly but respectfully on certain key issues.

For example, Parliament passed the Agricultural Landlord and Tenant Ordinance

(ALTO) in 1975 despite objections from Koya regarding the minimum length of leases,

the regulation of share cropping, and the method of land value assessment (Lal 1992:

225). In accordance with the Deed of Cession, the Instrument of Independence secured

83 percent of the land for indigenous Fijian landowners, while 8.6 percent was state-

owned, leaving just over 8 percent as alienable freehold land.39 Under ALTO, tenant

farmers (in most cases Indo-Fijian) were guaranteed thirty-year leases on the land they

were currently renting from indigenous Fijian landlords. ALTO succeeded in adding

some stability to the sugar industry, which was now a state-run industry after the CSR

Company pulled out in 1973, closing an important chapter in Fiji's history.

The 1970 Constitution provided Fiji with a bicameral legislature split between an

appointed Senate (twenty-two seats) and an elected House of Representatives (fifty-two

seats). In the latter, indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians each received twenty-two seats,

while eight were given to General Electors, which included Fiji's small but growing

Chinese community. A significant aspect of this Constitution was that eight Senators

appointed by the Great Council of Chiefs carried absolute veto power over any legislation

affecting indigenous Fijian affairs. The Alliance Party maintained its grip during the first

elections under this new Constitution in 1972, but in 1977 the NFP won the House

majority in a stunning upset. On the eve of Koya's appointment as prime minister, the

39Ron Crocombe, a Cook Island academic, points out that most of the 83 percent of the land owned by

indigenous Fijians is "useless mountains, remoter outer islands, or low fertility slopes," leaving theremainder of good quality agricultural land "leased, often against the owners' wishes in many cases, toIndian farmers and businessmen at rates fixed by law which are far below market value." Quoted from anopen letter to David Stanley (2001: 44).

70

governor-general (the Queen's representative) invoked his constitutional powers and

intervened, declaring that it was in the nation's interest that Ratu Mara form a minority

government.40 The NFP had won the majority in the first place due to a split in the

indigenous Fijian vote: two crucial seats had gone to the Fijian Nationalist Party, a new

party headed by Sakiasi Butadroka. As the name of his party suggests, Butadroka was a

fierce Fijian nationalist, and the "repatriation" of "Indians or people of Indian origin in

this country" was a significant part of his campaign platform (Lal 1992: 235). The

reaction of the Indo-Fijian community was emotional, perhaps best expressed by

Subramani, a writer and educator: "It is a strange irony of history that Indians, who had

been brought to work in the plantations so that Fijians could continue to develop within

their own culture and society, have become the casualties of emerging Fijian

nationalism" (1979: x). Following a second election in September 1977, the Alliance

Party regained its majority status and Ratu Mara was once again prime minister, a

position he would hold for a full decade.

Coups and Emigration: A Political History from 1987

At the end of a brief visit to Fiji in November 1986, Pope John Paul II shared

these words with the multiethnic crowd gathered to see him off at the airport: "In a very

visible way, you are a symbol of hope in the world. You have something to teach the

40Specifically, Section 73(2) states that the "Governor General, acting in his own deliberate judgment,

shall appoint as Prime Minister the Member of the House of Representatives who appears to him best ableto command the support of the majority of that House" (Lal 1992: 240).

71

world about solidarity and loving respect for every person."41 From the perspective of

history, however, the Pope's address is most notable for its prophetic irony: within six

months Fiji's democratically elected government would fall at the hands of masked

gunmen, and ethnic violence would threaten to destabilize the nation. This event has its

roots in the early 1980s when the NFP, then led by Jai Ram Reddy, initiated an alliance

with indigenous Fijian political powers in western Fiji, thus establishing a viable

challenge to the Alliance Party, the stronghold of the east. Success, however, would have

to wait until 1985, when the NFP joined ranks with the newly formed Fiji Labour Party

(FLP) led by Mahendra Chaudhry as secretary and Dr. Timoci Bavadra as president. As

the Labour Coalition, this new political force contested and won the national elections in

1987, and Bavadra, an indigenous Fijian, replaced Ratu Mara as prime minister.

As the Coalition formed government, however, rumblings among the defeated

party and their supporters began in eastern Viti Levu, decrying what they saw as an

"Indian-dominated" parliament. By late April, these protesters had organized into the

Taukei Movement, claiming that they were fighting to insure that indigenous Fijians "are

not overwhelmed into oblivion in the fields of commerce and business, education and

leadership in local government and their culture and tradition not replaced by a totally

strange and foreign one imposed on them through a constitution that does not guarantee

Fijian security and interests" (Lal 1992: 272).42 Another supporter of the Taukei

41"Pastoral Visit in the Fiji Islands, Farewell Ceremony, Address of John Paul II, Nadi (Fiji), 22

November 1986,"Libreria Editrice Vaticana, http://www.Vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1986/november/documents/hfjp-ii_spe_19861122_congedo-nadi-fiji_en.html. Accessed May 9,2007.42

This quote is by Tomasi Bole, a prominent figure of the movement, from a mission statement printed inthe Fiji Times. Taukei means "owner of the land" or "Fijian" in the Fijian language.

72

Movement put it this way: "I cannot imagine us listening to government leaders who are

not chiefs" (ibid.). Prime Minister Bavadra was a low-ranking chief, but he and his

cabinet symbolized a new wave of Fijian leadership that threatened the conservative, neo-

traditionalist, and ethnonationalist order. Beyond mere protests, the militant edge of the

Taukei Movement launched an organized destabilization campaign—including

roadblocks and firebombs—with the ultimate goal of forcing a state of emergency, and a

conspiracy developed within the military to stage a coup d'etat as a final resort (ibid.:

274).

On May 14, 1987 the South Pacific experienced its first military coup, by

coincidence 108 years to the day since the arrival of the first indentured Indian laborers in

Fiji. At 10 AM, several hooded men armed with automatic weapons entered the

Government Buildings under the leadership of Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka. Asking for calm,

Rabuka declared a "military takeover" and politely but firmly escorted Prime Minister

Bavadra and his parliament into waiting trucks. They would remain in military custody

for five days. There was no bloodshed, but as Satendra Nandan, one of the deposed

parliamentarians, wrote, "There is nothing like a bloodless coup just as there's nothing

like a bloodless stroke ... there's no blood in a heart seizure but we know the pain is

killing and every cell in your being is affected" (2001 : 33).

Over the following months the governor-general, the Great Council of Chiefs, and

the military attempted to find a constitutional solution to the forced change in

government. Even Ratu Mara added his voice to the cause of indigenous rights, the

ostensible reason for the coup: "The Fijian people are all too aware of the destiny of the

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indigenous Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, the Mayans of Central America, the

Caribs of Trinidad and Tobago, the Inuits of Canada, the Maoris of New Zealand and the

Aborigines of Australia, to name a few" (Lal 1992:312). Meanwhile, the more extreme

supporters of the Taukei Movement grew impatient with the legal process and continued

public protests and destabilizing violence, most of which they directed at Indo-Fijians or

Indo-Fijian businesses. Finally, Rabuka himself grew skeptical of the constitutional

review process and staged a second coup on September 25th of the same year, declaring

Fiji a republic. The military formally renounced the 1970 Constitution, which lost Fiji its

cherished spot in the Commonwealth (at the insistence of India) and garnered harsh

criticism from the international community. According to Lal, "For Indo-Fijians, the

military intervention appeared to mark the beginning of the second girmit, a second-class

life lived on the goodwill of the indigenous Fijians" (1992: 268).43

Rabuka brought Ratu Mara back as prime minister, and work began on a new

constitution amidst drastic economic fallout from the coups. The 1990 Constitution,

which largely excluding Indo-Fijians from meaningful political power, included a

number of Taukei demands, including the declaration of Christianity as the national

religion, the reservation of the posts of prime minister, president, and military

commander for indigenous Fijians, and amnesty for all coup perpetrators and supporters.

In this context, the Methodist Church emerged as a significant political force. It

manifested its power in measures such as in the Sunday Observance Decree, which

forbade all Fiji citizens from any form of work, travel, or commerce on Sunday.

43Girmit, as discussed above, refers to the contract of the Indian indentured laborers; a period of servitude.

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In the early 1990s, Rabuka left the military for politics, becoming president of the

newly formed Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT), a party backed by the Great

Council of Chiefs. Following elections in 1992, Rabuka became prime minister, and he

would serve Fiji in this position until 1999. Rabuka, himself a commoner, began to

develop his own political ideology and, by the mid-1990s, moved his party towards

national reconciliation, reaching out to Indo-Fijian political leaders such as Jai Ram

Reddy. The culmination of this process was the ratification of the 1997 Constitution,

based on the suggestions of the Reeves commission.44 This constitution repealed several

of the Fijian nationalist provisions of the previous constitution, reduced the number of

seats reserved for indigenous Fijians in the House of Representatives, and returned Fiji to

its place in the Commonwealth.

In the meantime, however, significant numbers of Indo-Fijians, displaced or

disheartened by the racialized political upheavals of the post-coup period, began to

emigrate from Fiji, choosing instead the "greener pastures" of New Zealand, Australia,

Canada, and the United States. The emigration of skilled Indo-Fijian workers had begun

in the 1970s, but their annual numbers increased significantly after the coups, and today

some projections suggest that nearly one-third of all Indo-Fijians now live outside of Fiji

(Voigt-Graf 2004: 181). Urban migration also increased for all ethnic groups in Fiji, and

by 1988, 42 percent of the Indo-Fijian population (still living in Fiji) resided in urban

areas (Lal 1992: 217). The catalysts for movement included a perceived lack of

44This advisory group included Sir Paul Reeves (a former governor-general of New Zealand), Tomasi

Vakatora (a representative of the Rabuka government), and Lal (as a historian and representative of theopposition).

75

opportunity in Fiji in the professional and public sector coupled with increasing unease

with the politics of Fijian nationalism. Sporadic acts of violence against Indo-Fijians and

the desecration—or even destruction—of Indo-Fijian places of worship added to this

unease. Another factor was (and continues to be) the expiration of ALTO land leases,

which began in 1997; in many cases, the landowners do not renew them. For example, a

study on 4,300 expired land leases in 2002 projected a total number of 22,000 families

displaced by non-renewal, most of these Indo-Fijian tenant cane farmers (Lingam 2002:

32). Over 120 squatter settlements have developed in the periphery of Fiji's cities and

towns, partly as a result of indigenous Fijian land reclamation.45 Following the coups and

the steady emigration of Indo-Fijians, the indigenous population finally regained its

numerical majority, and today the population of Fiji is divided between indigenous

Fijians (57.3 percent), Indo-Fijians (37.6 percent) and other ethnic groups, including

Chinese, European, and other Pacific Islanders (5 percent).46 This development of the

Indo-Fijian transnational community has led Lal to speculate that the epitaph of Indo-

Fijian history will read "immigration to emigration" (2004b: ix).

The current chapter of Indo-Fijian history begins with the 1999 elections, the first

under the nation's 1997 Constitution. Much to Rabuka's surprise and dismay, a

rejuvenated FLP led by Mahendra Chaudhry unseated the SVT, winning 37 of 71 seats.

Supporters hoped that Chaudhry's partnership with Ratu Mara, who remained president,

45Not all squatters are Indo-Fijian. Many indigenous Fijians, for example, become squatters in the course

of rural-urban migration due to unemployment or separation from village support networks. In areas aroundSuva and Nausori (in the east), the squatters are roughly divided between indigenous Fijians (3,640families) and Indo-Fijians (2,675 families), but in the sugar cane areas of western Fiji, the numbers are 837Fijian families to 3,316 Indo-Fijian families (Lingam 2002: 32).

Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, 2007 Census, Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj. AccessedNovember 12, 2007.

76

would shield the new government from attack; unfortunately, the FLP did not realize that

Ratu Mara's powerbase had suffered during Rabuka's ascendancy (Mishra 2001: 322).

Chaudhry became Fiji's first Indo-Fijian prime minister and led his People's Coalition

government for exactly one year. Then on May 19, 2000, Fiji's government fell once

more to a civilian coup led by George Speight, a failed businessman. Speight and his

armed supporters stormed the Parliament building at noon, where they remained for fifty-

six days, holding Chaudhry and forty-four members of his government as hostages.

Like his predecessor Rabuka, Speight claimed that he executed the coup in the

name of indigenous rights in spite of the fact that indigenous Fijians constituted two-

thirds of Chaudhry's cabinet. Speight himself was a (so-called) "part-European" or

"Kailoma," part of a small community of mixed ancestry that had recently began to

embrace their indigenous heritage in the face of waning European privilege (ibid.: 333).

Critics of the coup suggest that the underlying causes of the takeover were economic

rather than racial. It was well known that Speight had lost a fortune when the Chaudhry

government opted to hire a British-based company to market Fiji's mahogany industry

rather than the U.S. company that employed Speight. Furthermore, some Gujarati Indo-

Fijian business owners were investigated for backing the coup financially (Robertson and

Sutherland 2001).

Crucially, unlike Rabuka's coups, the 2000 coup did not have the crucial support

of the military, and Army Commander Voreqe ("Frank") Bainimarama moved against the

coup, declared martial law, and installed an interim government amid increasing threats

of civil unrest. "Once again," observed John Kelly and Martha Kaplan referring to the

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Indo-Fijians, "the people truly wronged, those with civil and political rights truly

violated, threatened no violence" (2001: 186). After prolonged negotiations the hostages

were released, and the military arrested Speight and many of his supporters on a technical

breach of their amnesty agreement. Until his recent transfer to a mainland prison, Speight

served his life sentence on Nukulau Island, which had, 100 years earlier, served as a

quarantine island for incoming Indian laborers—another of the many rich ironies in Fiji's

history.

Confronted by this recent history, observers, including politicians and academics,

began to speak of Fiji's "coup culture," although the explanatory discourse varied

depending on the perspective of the observer. For some, like Lal, the third coup

suggested that democracy in Fiji is indeed a "foreign flower," still struggling to survive in

the garden of neo-traditionalism and Fijian nationalism (2003: 157). Others, such as John

E. Davies, maintained that Fiji's history of coups was nothing less than "a cold war for

the soul of the country." He adds, "In trying to create a nation reflective of themselves,

Fijians have been crippled by two waves of colonialism, first under the British and then,

effectively, under Indians brought by the British" (Davies 2005: 61). These two

perspectives encompass the confrontation that has continued to define Fijian politics in

the new millennium.

Rather than returning to power, the FLP administration entered snap elections in

2001, which were won by the interim government headed by Laisenia Qarase. Although

the multi-party cabinet envisioned by the 1997 Constitution failed to materialize,

Chaudhry and the FLP remained as the voice of the opposition. Qarase's Soqosoqo

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Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) Party, while not the radical government that Speight had

called for, promised to review the constitution, buttress indigenous Fijian rights, and

develop affirmative action programs to improve indigenous Fijian education. The SDL

also introduced the controversial Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, which

ostensibly sought to identify coup supporters and move the nation forward through

healing, forgiveness, and restorative justice. Despite declaring 2005 to be the year of

"Forgiveness and Unity," the SDL failed to convince critics (including the FLP and the

military) that the bill would not seek amnesty for Speight and other key coup supporters.

Meanwhile, Indo-Fijians continued to emigrate amidst continued calls from the

Methodist church to make Fiji a Christian nation and the rapid decline of the sugar

industry (under European Union economic reforms that threatened preferential pricing for

sugar imports from former colonies). As national elections approached in 2006, it became

clear that the number of Indo-Fijian registered voters had dropped significantly since

2001. Chaudhry, once again leader of the FLP, declared solemnly to his voter base that

this election would be the last opportunity for Indo-Fijian candidates to make a serious

impact on national politics.

In early May, Chaudhry and the FLP lost the elections by a narrow margin to

Qarase and the SDL. This time, however, the latter surprised many observers by inviting

the FLP to form a multi-party cabinet, as stipulated by the 1997 Constitution. Nine

members of the FLP accepted Cabinet positions with substantial portfolios—although

Chaudhry declined—and Mick Beddoes, a member of the marginal United Peoples Party

(UPP), became the Leader of the Opposition. The period of cautious optimism that

79

followed slowly eroded under renewed conflicts between the Qarase government and the

military—particularly its commander, Bainimarama—over controversial legislation and

accusations of corruption. As chronicled in more detail in chapter 8, Bainimarama

initiated his "clean up campaign" on December 5, 2006, exiled Qarase to his home in the

remote eastern Lau group, and established an interim administration with himself in the

position of prime minister. This coup, Fiji's fourth in twenty years, alienated the nation-

state from its Pacific Rim neighbors, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and

once again lost Fiji its place in the Commonwealth. However, unlike the previous coups,

Bainimarama's take-over sidelined the issue of ethnicity, stressing instead regime change

and political justice; there was no Indo-Fijian "scapegoat." As Lal observed, "Many in

the Indo-Fijian community had long been dissatisfied with and disaffected by the Qarase

government's pro-Fijian affirmative action policies and nationalist rhetoric, and so found

crossing over to the Bainimarama camp easy" (2007: 5). In an ironic twist, Chaudhry, a

personal victim of the 1987 and 2000 coups, accepted a position in the interim

government as Minister of Finance, Sugar, National Planning, and Public Enterprise. In

early 2008, as I put the final touches on this dissertation, Bainimarama promised to move

Fiji back into democratic governance with fresh elections by 2010.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have sought to provide the requisite historical background for the

remaining chapters in Section II (which focus on the development of Hinduism in

colonial and contemporary Fiji, respectively) and the dissertation at large. This is,

80

ultimately, my own discourse about Fijian history, but it is also a meta-discourse about

the stories that individuals—academics, politicians, etc.—tell about the history of Fiji.

The narrative that unfolds is inseparable from the machinations of British colonial rule

(1874-1970), without discounting the agency of the colonized. In order to rule indirectly,

the British enshrined the cultural/political systems (as they interpreted them) of a regional

group of indigenous Fijians and imported Indian labor to shield indigenous Fijians at

large from the social transformation required of plantation labor. This transformation,

however, was not spared for the approximately 60,000 Indians who arrived in Fiji under

the indenture (contract) system between 1879 and 1916. The majority of these labor

migrants hailed from the northeastern "Bhojpuri belt" of India, and included both Hindus

(85 percent) and Muslims (15 percent). The former represented a wide variety of castes—

mostly middling and agricultural—and practiced the bhakti doctrine of Hinduism

(stressing a personal relationship with god through devotion). Laborers from South India,

mostly practitioners of "Dravidian village Hinduism," began arriving after 1903, forming

about a quarter of the total indentured Indian group. Initiated in the departure depots,

continued on the sea passage, and completed in the harsh conditions of the sugar estates

in Fiji, the process of indenture made "coolies" out of Indians, who named themselves

girmitiyas. With the exception of the ritually important Brahman designation, the caste

system fell into obsolescence, and the migrants developed a Creole language called "Fiji

Hindi" that remains the mother tongue for Indo-Fijians today. The inhumanity of the

indenture system in Fiji (in particular) became a cause celebre for Indian nationalists, and

the Empire-wide abolition of the labor scheme followed in 1920.

81

Once in "free" society, Indo-Fijians tended to settle in widely disbursed

homesteads in the sugarcane areas and continued to work in agriculture, although some

moved into retail in the urban areas. The latter occupation became increasingly

dominated by "passenger" migrants from India, particularly Gujaratis, who arrived at this

time along with the more agriculturally inclined Punjabis. The British, who developed

separate systems of administration and representation for indigenous Fijians and Indo-

Fijians, observed the growing population of the latter with acute unease, as did

indigenous Fijian leadership. The colony's so-called "Indian problem" became critical by

mid-century as the Indo-Fijian population surpassed that of indigenous Fijians, and Indo-

Fijian leaders agitated for adequate workers' rights and political representation. For Indo-

Fijians, this was a matter of izzat (self-respect) and insdf (justice).

Against the wishes of indigenous Fijian leadership, the British granted

independence to Fiji in 1970, securing in place a constitution that guaranteed indigenous

Fijian political paramountcy and ownership of more than 83 percent of the land. The

colonial race-based system of representation translated into post-independence political

parties divided along lines of ethnicity, particularly the indigenous Fijian-dominated

Alliance Party and the Indo-Fijian-dominated National Federation Party. The former,

under Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, carried Fiji through its first decades of independence,

stressing the doctrine of multiculturalism. However, things changed in 1987 with the

victory of the Fiji Labour Party, a coalition government based in western Fiji with strong

Indo-Fijian support. Sitiveni Rabuka's coups of the same year, purportedly in the name of

indigenous Fijian rights, irrevocably altered Fiji's ongoing experiment with democracy

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and established a precedent for the coups that followed in 2000 (by George Speight) and

2006 (by Voreqe Bainimarama). The instability engendered by Fiji's "coup culture,"

together with the insecurity instilled by the non-renewal of land leases to tenant farmers,

has contributed to high rates of Indo-Fijian urban drift and emigration. As a result,

indigenous Fijians have regained a majority in Fiji with 57.3 percent of the population,

while the Indo-Fijian population has dwindled down to just 37.6 percent.

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Chapter 4. The Development of Hinduism During Fiji's Colonial Period (1879-1970)

Having established the broader social and political history of the "Indo-Fijian

community," this chapter narrows the focus to the arena of religion, arguably the most

conspicuous and fundamentally meaningful context for Indo-Fijian musical performance.

As mentioned in the introduction, my work concentrates primarily on musicians and

listeners who identify, in one way or another, as Hindu, and practice their art (or consume

it) in a world framed and informed by a system of Hindu beliefs. And yet, to quote John

D. Kelly, "to say that someone is Hindu is to specify very little about the person's

religion" (1991: 43). As is often pointed out, "Hinduism," as a religious identification,

struggles to contain the great diversity of beliefs, tenets, and practices that are artificially

and, at times, arbitrarily subsumed under its purview. When compared to the other "world

religions," particularly Christianity and Islam, Hinduism noticeably lacks a central,

definitive text, an historical founder, and a crystallized, widely followed creed. Even the

degree to which Hinduism is polytheistic is debatable, as the major branches of

devotion—Shaivite (Shiva-worshipping), Vaishnavite (Vishnu-worshipping), and Shakta

(Devi-worshipping)—are understood by some to be aspects of a singular divine force.

Etymologically, the word "Hindu" derives from "Sindhu," the Sanskrit name for the

Indus River located in present-day Pakistan. It entered British colonial vocabulary by the

eighteenth century, referring to practitioners of the "native religion" who had not been

converted to Islam. By the early nineteenth century, observes CJ. Fuller, colonial

scholars had culled these diverse practices into an "ism" that "was itself partly a product

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of western orientalist thought, which (mis)constructed Hinduism on the model of

occidental religions, particularly Christianity" (1992: 10).

As I will describe in this chapter, the formulation of Hinduism in contemporary

Fiji owes much of its genesis to religious reform movements of late nineteenth-century

India, which spilled into the twentieth century following indentured Indian laborers to the

far reaches of the British Empire. Hindu reform movements, such as the Brahmo Samaj,

the Arya Samaj, and the Ramakrishna Mission, sought in various ways a masculine,

largely monotheistic doctrine in Hinduism's ancient past. In the words of Ashis Nandy,

these movements were at once revivalist and modernizing, asserting the superiority of

their spirituality and morality vis-a-vis Christianity by identifying the "golden age of

Hinduism as an ancient version of the modern West" (1983: 26). In this way, reformists

fashioned Hinduism as a countercolonial discourse, a move that required a systematic

attack on "orthodox Hinduism," the bhakti-oriented practices of the vast majority based

on the Puranas (post-Vedic literature), epics, and medieval devotional poetry. The Arya

Samaj, among other reform groups, revered the Vedas (the earliest sacred writings) as the

sole text of Hinduism, and dismissed subsequent literature as corrupt, emasculating, and

responsible for the passivity of Hinduism under Muslim and Christian rule. In response to

these attacks, orthodox Hindus became increasingly self-reflexive about their own

religious practices and rose to the defense of their gods and rituals, taking the name

"Sanatan Dharm" or "eternal religion." Many of these sectarian battles would take place

in the colonies where, as in India, Sanatan Dharm held the majority among Hindus and

the Arya Samaj maintained the status of a vital minority. In Fiji, the contributions of

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these two groups must be considered in relation to other influences on the local concept

of Hinduism: regional (in addition to the North Indian majority, there is a significant

presence of South Indian bhakti practices and goddess worship); circumstantial ("free"

Gujarati immigrants brought with them their own set of Hindu practices); and

chronological (more recent "Hindu missionary" groups, such as the Hare Krishna and

Sathya Sai Baba movements exert a subtle influence on the concept of Hinduism in Fiji

today). Suffice to say, my use of the terms "Hindu" and "Hinduism" in this work should

always be read with an implied footnote denoting the multiplicity of meaning contained

within them, and their use will often be specifically qualified. Indeed, as discussed below,

the claiming of this identifier and the articulation of what it means to be a Hindu lie at the

heart of my analysis of identity discourse in and about the Indo-Fijian community.

In tandem with this exegesis of Hinduism, this chapter further explores one of the

central claims of this dissertation: that musical performance is somehow intrinsic to the

practice of devotional Hinduism in Fiji. While in no way unique to Hinduism, the concept

of musical sound as sacred has a place of distinction in Hindu iconography and literature.

The gods themselves play musical instruments—Shiva is sometimes depicted playing the

drum to accompany his cosmic dance; Sarasvati, the patron deity of musicians, plucks the

vina; and Krishna famously plays the flute. Early Sanskrit treatises, following the Vedas

and Upanishads, emphasized the concept of Ndda-brahma, or sacred, causal sound, the

chanting of which is one path to moksa, or liberation from the cycle of reincarnation.

47The four Vedas—Rgveda, Yajurveda, Samveda, and Atharaveda—date to the third millennium B.C.E.,

while the Upanishads, important philosophical meditations, date to as early as 800 B.C.E. Although the

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This concept of sacred sound continues to inform the philosophy undergirding Indian

classical art music, where it is sometimes understood as the "language of god" (Ruckert

2004:18). "By the adoration of sound [Ndda-brahma]," reads the Sangltaratndkara, one

of the most important Indian musical treatises, "the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are

truly worshipped, for they are the embodiment of sound."48

More directly relevant to Indo-Fijian music, the philosophy of Ndda-brahma

entered the bhakti literature, appearing in Vaishnavite treatises such as the fifteenth-

century Sangita-Ddmodara and the eighteenth-century Bhakti-Ratndkara (Beck 1993:

109). Originating in South India in the sixth century C.E., the bhakti movement spread

northward, where a rich devotional literature developed during the medieval period

(1300-1550) and early modern period (1550-1750). "Bhakti" derives from "bhaj,"

meaning to "adore, worship," and shares this root with the word "bhaj an," a generic term

for devotional singing (Slawek 1996: 58). As noted earlier, the bhakti movement sought a

direct relationship between the devotee and the divine through personal devotion, and the

singing of devotional poetry became one of the hallmarks of the bhakti era. Devotional

songs directed to god incarnate (saguna)—by Mirabai, Surdas, and Tulsidas—and the

formless divine (nirguna)—by Kabir and Dadu—are still sung today. In Goswami

Tulsidas' telling of the Ramayana epic, so important to Hinduism in Fiji, Ram himself

identifies "singing My praises with a guileless purpose" as one of the nine forms of

concept of Ndda-brahma grew out of this literature, it crystallized into its current meaning during theTantric and theistic traditions after 500 C.E. (Beck 1993).48 Written by Sarngadeva in 1240 C.E.; translation by Lewis Rowell (1992: 38).

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bhakti.49 Furthermore, the bhakti movement challenged the primacy of the Vedas, the

rigidity of the caste system, and the hold of Sanskrit on Hindu ritual; the words used by

singers to reach god utilized, and in turn enriched, vernacular languages such as Braj

Bhasha, Brajbuli, Bengali, and Marathi.

The relationship between musical performance and Hinduism is, therefore, not

just inherent, but intimate. It follows that, in the spirit of "musical anthropology," I

approach bhakti-oriented Sanatan Dharm Hinduism in Fiji through the sites of its musical

performance. This chapter begins, however, with an account of Hinduism during Fiji's

indenture period, noting the resilience of its central texts, observances, and rituals despite

the subjugation of religious practice under this oppressive system. The second section

continues with the indenture period, examining the religious festivals of the period and

the inter-religious cooperation they engendered. The third section covers the post-

indenture era, exploring the revival and rearticulation of Hinduism in the "Indian

settlements" and its ultimate fragmentation into sectarian organizations. The final section

chronicles the watershed debates between the Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharm sects,

describing the ascendancy of the latter to a position representing the majority of Hindus

in Fiji by Independence in 1970. The purpose of this chapter, together with chapter 5, is

to provide a contextual foundation for the subsequent chapters that deal more directly

with my ethnographic material. Nevertheless, musical performance—gleaned either from

the historical record or my fieldwork—has a prominent place in this chapter as well.

49Aranya hand, Doha 35. This translation is from the Gita Press edition of Sri Rdmcaritmdnas (Tulsidas

2001:698).

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Rupture and Suture: Hinduism under Indenture (1879-1920)

In 1912, a Hindu girmitiya named Pancham arrived on a crowded indenture vessel

and disembarked on Nukulau Island, the reception point and quarantine center near Suva,

Fiji's capital. Six decades later, he described this arrival to the historian Ahmed Ali:

The sardar there had had an addition to his family and was celebrating thesixth day of [the] birth of his child. He enquired if there were any singersor dancers among us. There was a boy who said he could dance andsomeone who claimed he could sing; another stated that he could beat thedrums; a group was thus formed. Our dancer came from a very rich familybut had been ruined by bad company and was forced to come to Fiji. Iwent to the party and the whole night was spent in singing and dancing.(2004: 37)

We catch, in this brief account, a rare glimpse of the interplay of actors and forces that

shaped Hinduism—and its performance—in colonial Fiji. The ethnically Indian sardar,

no doubt established in Fiji for some years, demonstrates a desire to observe the Hindu

tradition of celebrating the sixth day (chathl) after the birth of his child despite his

family's isolation on the quarantine island. The newly arrived laborers, for their part,

meet the demands of ritual through ingenuity, scraping together an ensemble from

whatever human and material resources are available. If he knew the repertoire, the

singer would have likely performed sohar, songs to commemorate childbirth. We also see

a night of gaiety, clearly memorable to Pancham, who would tell Ali many years later

that "it is just as well that indenture lasted only five years ... had it been for six years I

would have preferred to be dead" (ibid.: 40).

Contemporaries, survivors, and historians tend to characterize the indenture

period as a disruptive, transformative experience—the crucible from which Indo-Fijian

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culture emerged. We are reminded, in this regard, of Stuart Hall's analysis of black

Caribbean cultural identity, which, he writes, owes much to the "rupture" and "profound

discontinuity" wrought by the experience of slavery (1990: 226). Although Indian

indenture was a far more refined, regulated, and humane system than African slavery, the

girmitiyas were subject to their own relative experience, and as we have seen, historical

critiques of the indenture system suggest that it functioned as a "new system of

slavery."50 Accounts by girmitiyas, like Totaram Sanadhya, emphasize the kast (trouble,

disruption, hardship) of the indenture experience. "Do not ask about religion in the

indenture days," says another of Ali's ex-girmitiyas. "If anybody tried to say his prayers

he would have got a kick on his behind from a European" (2004: 70). While this is an

extreme case—most accounts reveal a more tolerant attitude on the plantations—it points

to the fact that the girmitiyas' religious freedom was subject to the caprice of Colonial

Sugar Refining (CSR) Company employees, who managed nearly every sugar estate in

colonial Fiji. Religion, it is clear, was an acceptable casualty in the colonial processes of

making "coolies" out of Indians. British colonial authorities showed relative indifference

to girmitiya religious activity, in terms of policy, until they made the connection between

the rise of social evils (murder, suicide, etc.) and a decline in girmitiya religious life late

in the indenture period (Gillion 1962: 123). But the experiences of rupture, upheaval, and

separation, writes Hall, dialogue constantly with the forces of suture, reclamation, and

continuity in framing postcolonial cultural identities (1990: 226). The break with the past

caused by indenture, while significant in terms of caste, language, and family structure,

Hugh Tinker employs this phrase as the title of his monograph, A New System of Slavery: The Export ofIndian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920 (1993).

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was not as total as the African slave experience, and Indian religions survived on the

plantations by whatever means were available. As detailed below, the practice of

Hinduism in Fiji, although modest on the sugar estates, was revived and sustained by

enterprising individuals among the growing number of Indian settlements and town

centers.

The survival of Hinduism in the "coolie lines" (plantation barracks) depended on

the influence of knowledgeable, literate individuals, the availability of religious texts,

and, increasingly, contact with members of the time-expired ex-girmitiya society.

Although the days were long with labor, girmitiyas made time in the evenings and on

Sundays to discuss religion, sing religious songs, and listen to recitations of holy texts.

"Religion is offered for sale in the bazar," observes Reverend J.W. Burton, a Methodist

missionary and critic of the indenture system. He describes, in colorful detail, the

competitive pronouncements of various holy men among the food stalls: afaqir, a pandit,

a Christian missionary, a maulvl, and a sadhu,51 whose scores of devotees "reverently

prostrate themselves before him, and, with faces upon the earth, reach out their hands to

touch his feet" (1910: 298-99). We know from Sanadhya's memoirs that various bhakti

and reform sects of North India were well represented among the plantations and nascent

Indian settlements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of these

groups, such as the Nath, Nanak, Satnami, Dadu Panthi, and Jagjivandas sects, would

have minimal impact on the development of Hinduism in Fiji. Others, such as the Kabir

Afaqir is a Muslim ascetic, a pandit is a Hindu priest, a maulvl is a Muslim teacher, and a sddhu is aHindu ascetic.

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Panthi, Ramanandi, and Arya Samaji sects, attracted a greater following and had a lasting

influence. Still, Sanadhya is skeptical about the efficacy of these sects and the

motivations of their local founders. The girmitiyas, he writes, "are like an unsteady boat

caught in a whirlpool. The different sects are pulling in different directions. To overcome

this, there is an urgent need for books, teachers and education, all of which are lacking"

(Lai and Yadav 1995: 104).53

These sects, nonetheless, had much in common. They rejected the caste system in

favor of universal fellowship, they challenged the brahmanical order, and, above all, they

emphasized a relationship with god through bhakti and the singing of bhajans. Baldeo

Prasad Pracharak, who arrived with his girmitiya mother in 1914, recalls the audible

presence of sects like the Ramanandi and Kabir Panthi during the last days of indenture:

"In house after house there were Ram ki Kathaen (stories chanted about Ram), and the

bhajans of Sur Sagar and Kabir's Bijak left their influence." (Somerville 1986: 113)54 J.S.

Kanwal, an author and historian, also claims that the bhajans of Kabir, Surdas, Mirabai,

and Tulsidas were among the favorites of the girmitiyas (1980: 41). In some cases, the

cherished texts used for bhajan singing, religious rituals, and preaching were carried from

52The Kabir Panthis revere the medieval bhakti poet Kabir, claimed by both Hindus and Muslims. His

mystical, nirguna bhajans rejected brahmanical paramountcy and usually carried a strong social or moralmessage. The Kabir Panthis remain a minority sect in Fiji today. The Ramanandi sect follows the teachingsof Ramananda, believed to be Kabir's guru. They emphasize the worship of Ram as an avatar of Vishnu,and although this form of bhakti is still dominant in Fiji today, no sect currently operates under that name.The Arya Samaj, as mentioned, is a reformist Hindu society. Their impact on Hinduism in Fiji is chronicledbelow (Lal and Yadav 1995).

This text, which Sanadhya dictated to Benarsidas Chaturvedi, remained unpublished and in thepossession of K.L. Gillion, who refers to it as "The Religious and Social Condition of the Indians in Fiji." Itwas eventually translated into English by Brij V. Lal and Yogendra Yadav.

The Sur Sagar (Sur-Sagar) is a medieval collection of bhakti verses by Surdas in praise of Krishna,while the Bijak (Bijak) is the sacred book of the Kabir Panthis. This quote is from from Pracharak'sRamopasak Shri Kabir Sahib.

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India by the girmitiyas themselves. By the turn of the century, local shopkeepers began to

take an interest in the import of literature that they could sell to the growing Indian

community. Around this time, Sanadhya took it upon himself to inventory the number

and type of Hindu books that were then available. The following remarkable passage

describes the Ba district, the area in which I situated my fieldwork: "In Ba, there were 41

books, including nine copies of Salinga Sadabrij, four Baital Pachisi, 13 of Indra Sabha,

one Valmiki Ramayana, two Vivah Padhati, two Satyarth Prakash, four

Ramcharitamanas, four Alaha Khand, and two Satyanarayan ki katha" (Lal and Yadav

1995: 102).55 Access to these various texts, reflecting the diversity of Hindu practice in

the lines and settlements, lessened the girmitiyas' dependence on their fragmented oral

repertoire and paved the way for a text-based Hinduism in Fiji.

Literate individuals were thus highly prized, both for their ability to read religious

texts and their role in communicating with the homeland through letters and newspapers.

According to the Fiji Census of 1911, only 9.4 percent of the "Indian" population was

able to read and write, and this number increased to 16 percent by 1922 (Somerville

1986: 9; Kelly 1991: 114). Literacy elevated individuals to a new status and, in some

cases, served as a gateway to de facto religious leadership in the absence of Brahmans,

the traditional priestly class. Contemporary accounts often describe how ambitious

individuals, taking advantage of the anonymity of indenture, reinvented themselves not

only as pandits, but as Brahmans, whose exalted caste status was still respected by the

Many of these books are collections of mythic, romantic, and even raunchy stories, some of which—particularly the Alaha Khand—were sung as ballads by the girmitiyas. In addition to the Ramayana epic (inversions by Valmiki and Tulsidas), religious texts include the Vivah Padhati (a manual for weddingrituals), the Satyarth Prakash (the primary Arya Samaj text by Swami Dayananda Saraswati), and theSatyanarayan ki katha (a collection of Vaishnavite stories from the Skanda Purana).

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orthodox Hindu majority. Sanadhya, a genuine Brahman, dismissed most of these men as

swindlers and opportunists. Following the completion of his indenture contract in 1898,

Sanadhya decided to train himself as a pandit by memorizing what few texts were

available. He would muse later, "People attain the status of pandit after years of learning,

and here I was, a nobody, who had become an instant pandit in Fiji" (Lal and Yadav

1995: 103). His description of his daily routine is worth quoting at length:

As the people arrived, I would busy myself in the prayer room, hiddenfrom them by the cloth partition. To impress the people with my newpriestly role, I would take a long time decorating my forehead with tilakmarks. Then I would come out taking Lord Ram's name. The peoplegathered outside the hut would greet me respectfully. Putting my palmstogether and invoking the name of goddess Durga, I would greet thempolitely. The people would leave after I gave them prasad. I repeated thisroutine in the evening after returning from work. I would also narrateepisodes from the Ramcharitamanas until about midnight. (Lal and Yadav1995: 103)56

Despite his revealing candor, Sanadhya would become one of Hinduism's most trusted

custodians in Fiji, and we can detect in this account the hallmarks of Sanatan Dharm

Hinduism: the appeal to personalized gods, the intermediary role of knowledgeable

leaders, and, perhaps above all, the reverence of Tulsidas' Ramayana, the

Ramcaritmanas.

Tilak, in this case, refers to Hindu forehead markings that usually reveal sect adherence. Prasad (prasad)refers to food items, usually fruit or sweets, blessed by the deity and distributed to devotees.

Please see Appendix 3 for a plot summary of the Ramayana narrative. In this dissertation, reference to"Rdmcaritmdnas," "Ramayana," or "the Ramayana narrative" should be read as synonymous, unlessparticular reference is made to Valmiki or authorship other than Tulsidas. When appropriate, I also use thelocal Fiji spelling, "Ramayan."

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References to the Rdmcaritmdnas and its performance through song and recitation

{katha) during the indenture period are numerous in girmitiya oral literature. In a typical

example, an ex-girmitiya named Lakhpat told Ali: "In those days, there were frequent

recitals of the katha. One's jahajis [shipmates] from another estate often sent invitations

for such occasions...." (2004: 64). It was at such recitals that the present-day Indo-Fijian

musical ensemble began to take shape. Initially, musical accompaniment was sparse,

sometimes restricted to found objects such as empty biscuit tins. Gradually, as Balram

Vashishta recalls, other instruments were literally carved from the landscape:

Necessity is the mother of invention; and they hollowed out wood to makedhol (drum), khanjari (tambourine), and kartal (for beating time). Atamboura was made from melons; and I have seen today [1974] atamboura made from a melon and a coconut. By various means ...sarangi, dand tal, and majira were made by our Indians themselves.(Somerville 1986: 98)58

In a similar spirit, empty Fiji Bitter beer bottles (struck as idiophones) remain a part of

music ensembles in northern Fiji even today (Brenneis 2000: 612). Reverend Burton,

whose tenure in Fiji was between 1901 and 1910, describes the sound of one of these

early ensembles. Of the girmitiyas' Sunday activities, he writes, "They are back before

dark, and make the night hideous with attempts at music. The beat of tom-toms, the blare

of conch-shells, the clanging of cymbals, and the squeal of pipes, refuse to be drowned by

58

From his unpublished manuscript, "Promulgation of the Ramayan in Fiji," circa 1974. The variousinstrument names are explained elsewhere in this dissertation and the glossary. The spellings andparenthetical descriptions are presumed to be Vashishta's.

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the loud, frantic voices of those who mangle the Indian chants" (1910: 302-03).59 While

the reverend demonstrates a questionable authority on the aesthetics of devotional Indian

music, there is no question that he misses the deeper significance of their weekly

religious commitment.

Although these evening and weekend sittings certainly gave the laborers an

opportunity to relax, socialize, and enjoy the simple pleasures of singing, they functioned

primarily as religious events and fulfilled a critical social need. As Kelly has observed,

Hindu practice during indenture emphasized saran (shelter) and bacnd (rescue) from

kast, which, as noted earlier, means "distress" or "trouble," especially that caused by the

actions of others (2003: 22). Appealing to Ram or Hanuman (Ram's greatest

intermediary) through the singing of Tulsidas' bhakti-rich text insured the devotee

protection from the polluting forces of indenture, or so was believed. Furthermore, the

girmitiyas recognized their own experiences of dislocation in the Rdmcaritmdnas'

narrative of Ram's fourteen-year exile in the forest. Vijay Mishra, an Indo-Fijian literary

critic, notes that Fiji "easily became the forest of Dandak in the Rdmdyana, a temporary

state from which Rama and Sita would some day return. It was a perfect structure and

Indians in Fiji responded to it with enthusiasm" (1979: 140). Indeed, Sanadhya, in his

memoirs, refers to his twenty-one years in Fiji as "my own Ram-story" (2003: 97). But as

suggested by Mishra, the metaphor of exile contains within it the hope of "return," which

in the Rdmcaritmdnas is followed by Ramraj, the "golden era" of Ram's benevolent rule.

59"Tom-tom" is a generic word for non-Western drum used by writers of this period; the conch shell is

commonly played as a trumpet in Hindu worship; and the "pipes" probably refer to the sehnai, a double-reed aerophone.

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The power of the Ramayana narrative during indenture, therefore, combined the promise

of shelter or rescue—from the daily physical and spiritual risks of life in the lines—with

a metaphoric vision of exile's end and a Utopian future. With Tulsidas as the trusted

guide, the path to both was Ram-bhakti—steadfast personal devotion to Ram. At the

close of their contracts, most girmitiyas would seek their personal Utopia in Fiji, knowing

what they left behind in India.

Between the years of laborious exile and the return to a golden, sheltering rule,

however, lies the Ramayana's climactic moment and most penetrating motif: Ram's

defeat of Ravan on the battlefield, personifying the victory of good over evil. It is here

that Kelly locates the political life of the narrative under colonialism. Beyond seeking

shelter through the divine, the girmitiyas had the power to confront their predicament

(their kast) themselves. The modeling of Hindu dharma (moral code) in the (usually

unambiguous) actions of the Ramayana's central characters invested the girmitiyas with

an indelible self-respect located outside and in opposition to the (de)moralizing discourse

of their oppressors. Furthermore, the narrative provided the laborers with an impressive

allegorical repertoire that could be deployed in counterhegemonic discourse or activities

with the confidence of one destined to win the battle. Kelly summarizes his position this

way:

Certainly for Fiji... the imaginative instruments of the Ramayana becamecrucial tools for the moral reinscription of selves and world in terms notonly more dignifying than those intrinsic to the plantation capitalistmachinery, but also virtually, and sometimes actually, empowering ofcountercolonial initiatives. For its tropes of exile and struggle, as well asfor its powers to divinize self-interest and demonize enemies, the

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Ramayana narrative came to have great value in the emergent societies ofindenture colonies, made up largely of unlettered young adults, cut offfrom caste, family, friends and elders. (2001: 332)

In short, the Ramayana, in combination with other religious texts and rituals, provided the

"coolie" with an alternative concept of self: the Hindu. The rhetorical arsenal of the

narrative, as Kelly notes, simultaneously connected the colony to the concurrent rise of

Indian nationalism in India, where Rdmrdj became a rallying point for Swaraj, or "home

rule." Here, the campaign to abolish the indenture system—one of the key early

successes of the Indian independence movement—foregrounded the plight of indentured

women, who, like Sita, suffered the risk of defilement in the clutches of an evil system.60

Spectacle and Cooperation: Religious Festivals during the Indenture Period (1879—

1920)

In colonial Fiji, the political discourse of the Ramayana emerged most explicitly

in the festival of Ramlila (Rdmlild), the annual reenactment of the Ram story using

actors, costumes, narration, and music. By the time Sanadhya departed Fiji in 1914, he

had observed the performance of Ramlila in several locations, including Lautoka. He

claims to have directed the first Ramlila in Fiji at Navua in 1902, although the Labasa

(Bulileka) Ramlila apparently began the same year on Vanua Levu to the north (Kelly

2003: 4; Prasad 1974: 29). Even during the indenture years, the festival generally lasted

To give one example, Sarojini Naidu, in a speech against indenture, addressed her male Indian audienceas the accusing, unforgiving populace of Ayodhya in Valmiki's Ramayana: "I have traveled far, gentlemen,to come to you tonight, only to raise my voice, not for the men, but for women, for those women whoseproudest memory is that Sita would not stand the challenge to her honour, but called upon mother earth toavenge her and the earth opened up to avenge her" (Andrews 1918: 87).

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Figure 4: Ravan Effigy at early Ramlila. Used with permission from the Fiji Museum.

for ten days, incorporating puja (puja, worship ritual), dramatic episodes from the

Ramayana, and comedic entertainment on a nightly basis. Sanadhya tells us that in some

places indigenous Fijians joined the drama, portraying members of the demon army (Lal

and Yadav 1995: 109). On the final weekend, the festival took on a carnival atmosphere

with sporting events, makeshift amusement rides, and venders of all types. The climax,

however, occurred on the final day when Ravan, the demon king of Lanka, fell to Ram's

arrow. At this time, the victors set aflame a large effigy of Ravan (more than thirty feet

tall in some surviving photos) commemorating the destruction of evil (see Figure 4). The

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figure of Ravan has a nearly limitless potential as a stand-in for immoral, corruptive, or

oppressive forces in society, just as Ram carries the same potential to symbolize absolute

good. As in India,61 the burning of Ravan in colonial Fiji may have cloaked a subversive

attack on authority, ranging from a despised plantation owner to British colonialism

itself. Direct evidence in this regard is thin—Kelly quotes a 1948 pamphlet by an Indo-

Fijian writer who claims that the British treatment of girmitiyas "surpassed even

Ravana"—but we do know that Indians in Fiji celebrated the abolition of indenture by

burning effigies labeled "coolie" (2001: 330). There is, therefore, some evidence

pointing to the strategic deployment of symbolism in Fiji's countercolonial efforts, and

there was no greater reservoir of metaphor than the Ramayana.

As girmitiyas joined the growing time-expired Indian settlements or moved into

towns, the Ramlila provided an annual "inventory" of the emerging Hindu community. It

took third place, however, to the two major girmitiya festivals of the indenture period,

Holi and Muharram. Holi (Holi) was the Hindu festival, celebrating once again the defeat

of evil at the hands of righteousness. Muharram, better known in Fiji as "Tazia" or

"Tajia," was a Shia Muslim festival that commemorated the martyrdom of Hassan and

Hussain, the Prophet's grandsons, in the battle of Karbala. Early in the indenture period,

The role of Ramlilas in Indian nationalism is well documented. For example, Nandini Gooptu notes thatthe 1921 Ramlila procession in Allahabad included images of Gandhi and his famous spinning wheel, and"[t]he revered figures of Ram, Sita and Lakshman were dressed in hand-woven khadi [fabric] clothes, withtheir denigrated adversary Ravana in foreign outfit" (2001: 232).

The account of "coolie" effigies comes from Gillion (1962: 181), and Ali quotes a newspaperadvertisement (titled "Indentured Labourers' Funeral on the Rewa" and signed "Rewa Indians") from 1917:"On Saturday the 23rd, inst, at 2 p.m., at Nausori, will be cremated the dead body of this old friend ofEuropean planters, and the enemy of Indian national self-respect, national honor, national name and fame—a hideous monster preying on Indian womanhood and torturing its victims into a life of misery and shame,and bringing up its offspring in sin and filth" (2004: 20).

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these festivals achieved the status of official Hindu and Muslim holidays respectively,

and the colonial government established regulations to accommodate their observance.

On this matter, two commissioners from colonial India wrote the following report based

on a visit to Fiji in 1913:

The celebration of either marriages or festivals is attended with nodifficulties. As in all other colonies employers are either considerate orgenerous in assisting immigrants to fulfill religious or social obligations.Week ends and general holidays are spent by labourers in visiting friends,and on special occasions leave is given. (McNeill and Lal 1915: 256)63

Even more than Ramlila, these festivals combined religious ritual with great spectacle—

ecstatic abandon in the case of Tazia and riotous pleasure in the case of Holi. Tazia took

its name from giant, exquisitely decorated paper and bamboo mausoleum models, which

the participants constructed and carried in procession (see Figure 5). These tazids,

representing the tombs of the martyrs, were processed to a river or the sea where they

were ritually dismantled and submerged by the celebrants. Although this was a Shia

festival, Sunni Muslims in Fiji also adopted the festival, although they shed many of the

associated rituals. Holi, based on multiple origin stories involving Vishnu, was a

springtime rite in India. In colonial Fiji, where it was also known as Phagua for the Hindu

month of Phagun, Holi was marked by social inversion and transcendence, especially in

terms of gender and age activities. Then as now, the main activity was rang khelnd

("playing with color") in which participants doused each other with colored liquid or

On the reliability of this report, Gillion writes: "Although the report was accurate in detail, it wasincomplete in that it did not deal with social and moral conditions" (1962: 174).

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Figure 5: Tazias Built for Muharram. Used with permission from the Fiji Museum.

powder.

Two vignettes from the historical record demonstrate how the girmitiyas

incorporated colonial authority figures into the ritualized play of Holi. The first is an

extract from the memoirs of Walter Gill, a young Australian overseer stationed at the

Lautoka sugar mill in the final years of indenture following World War I:

On the day of Holi or Phagua, bands of women roamed the countrysideuntil noon, showering men with red fluid meant to represent blood. It wasa rite associated with the goddess Khali, and being their only period of

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licence during the long year, the women made the most of it. By midday,unpopular overseers looked like what happened on St Bartholomew'sDay; the popular were drenched in cheap perfume. From the glimmer ofdawn, Lautoka and the estates were overrun by gaggles of excited womenand girls out for a good time. With male control absent for the time being,things happened that would stagger the godly. (1970: 121)64

Sir Reginald St. Johnston, a colonial administrator who served in Fiji during the 1910s,

provides the second account. He suggests that even the Governor of Fiji was not exempt

from the staining dye of Holi, a fact that no doubt reflects the Indian colonial

government's increasing scrutiny of the indenture system:

It is a recognized thing on these occasions to scatter a purple-colouredscented water over all and sundry. This, of course, refers only to their ownpeople, though occasionally a well-known Indian shopkeeper might inhesitating jest take the same liberty with one of the junior white employeesof the Company. Imagine the feelings of the senior officials of the CivilService when a certain Governor, apparently considering that it was politicto give practical proof to our brown brothers that equality and fraternitywere no empty words, allowed himself to be solemnly squirted with thepurple dye! (1922: 96)

Taken together, these colonial anecdotes evince that the Holi festival created a space in

colonial Fiji for officially (and religiously) sanctioned social inversion, which, while

temporary, was seized by the girmitiyas with great excitement. Through the play of

colors the participants negotiated their uneven social relationships—amongst themselves

and with their authorities—in symbolic gestures that ranged from "hesitating jest" to

those that "would stagger the godly." Kelly interprets the brazen play of Holi, together

64Gill's reference to "Khali" (Kali) as a central figure in Holi is probably a mistake; he may have collapsed

her with Holika, the more common female antagonist associated with the festival. (See chapter 7 for moreon the mythology of the Holi festival.)

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with the raucous celebration of martyrs displayed in Tazia, as rituals of transcendence

particular to the oppressive context of indenture (1988b: 48). Like the Ravan effigies of

Ramlila, the paper mausoleums of Tazia became charged symbols, not of evil incarnate

but of girmitiya achievement, referencing and celebrating a world that predated and

superseded their immediate experience under colonialism. Unlike Tazia, however, Holi

was destined to survive the indenture period, and as discussed in chapter 6, it maintains

an important place in the Hindu ritual calendar.

As with the Ramayana recitals and Ramlila, musical performance played a central

role in the celebrations of Holi and Tazia. Speaking with Jhagru, an ex-girmitiya from an

estate near Labasa, Shiu Prasad recorded the following glimpse into these indenture-era

festivities. Alongside these two festivals, Jhagru also describes the annual Dipavali

(Diwali) holiday and remembers with nostalgia the musical activities involved with these

joyful occasions:

Holi, Deepawali, Moharram and Ram Leela were other holidays which wecelebrated with fun and alacrity. We celebrated Holi with coloured waterand always looked for the opportunity to pour water, powder and otherthings on women. We visited every house, sang songs, played drums, andate delicacies offered by the head of the household. Even adversarieswould forget about their enmity and join us in the celebration. Deepawaliwas celebrated likewise: we invited our jahaji bhais (ship-mates) andother friends, read Ramayana, distributed sweets, sent some sweets, curryand pury (a kind of roti [bread] cooked in oil) to sahibs whom we liked,and lit candles. Moharram was also celebrated with a great pomp andvigour. We feasted, sang, danced, played hudda (huge drum) andconducted games such as wrestling. I remember very well how my songsbased on Tajia (Moharram) often made the women cry. (Prasad 1974: 28-29)

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Jhagru refers to the songs of the Holi season, generally called "chautal" (cautal) or

"Faag" (from Phagun)in Fiji, which were performed amidst the color-play on house-to-

house visits. The chautal repertoire is dominated by the Vaishnavite themes of Holi,

especially the mischievous or romantic tales of Krishna from the Bhagavata Purana and

Krishna bhakti canon. Holi, in the indenture period, may have been a festival of inversion

and release, but it was also a religious observance undergirded by a repertoire of

devotional songs. Furthermore, Jhagru alludes to what would become one of the central

themes of Holi in the twentieth century and today: forgiveness, fellowship, and harmony

in the family or community (see chapter 6). Oral histories and colonial records make

frequent references to the singing and drumming that accompanied the procession during

Tazia, although Jhagru is the most specific. His songs that "would make women cry"

were most likely marsiyahs, the Shia dirges for Hussain performed during Muharram.

The drum ensemble that followed the tazia procession included several tdssd (high-

pitched kettle drums), jhanjh (hand cymbals), and a large double-headed barrel drum

called hudda. Although marslyah singing is a lost art in Fiji, the tdssd ensemble still

appears in wedding processions, especially in Vanua Levu.65

Finally, regarding the development of Hinduism in Fiji—and Indo-Fijian religion

in general—the most conspicuous aspect of the weekly Ramayana sittings, Ramlila, Holi,

and Tazia during indenture is that both Hindus and Muslims attended these rites. Jhagru

The tazia tradition continues today in the Caribbean, where Muharram is known as Hosay. The themesof the marslyah dirges survive in the sequence and naming of the tdssd rhythms that accompany each phaseof the procession in Trinidad (Korom 1994: 80).

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implies as much in the quote above, but it is also one of the most consistent observations

in the oral histories of ex-girmitiyas. For example, Sanadhya told Benarsidas Chaturvedi

the following about Tazia: "Hindus contribute generously and take part in the festival.

Hindu men and women make offerings, and join in the processions, beating drums and

flagellating themselves. There is no religious disharmony among the people; everyone

works together" (Lal and Yadav 1995: 109).66 Apparently Hindus commonly accepted

invitations to hear Qur'an recitation in lines, just as Muslims participated in the

gatherings featuring singing from the Ramayana. Adrian C. Mayer points out that this

sort of religious cooperation reflected a continuation of village life in India:

Many Muslims and Hindus coming to Fiji had known of cooperation inIndia with people of the other religion. They had attended each other'sfestivals, had asked favours of each other's saints, had provided economicservices for each other, and sometimes had shared authority in the villageas fellow headmen.... The conditions of indenture and early settlementsupported and often strengthened the closeness of these communal ties.People of both religions were housed in the same barracks, and worked inthe same fields. Many of them, illiterate and without spiritual leaders,performed impartially any rites of either religion which they imaginedwould be beneficial. And, a most lasting effect, the small numbers ofwomen caused inter-marriage between Hindus and Muslims. (1961: 149-50)

Yet in the 1920s, as a sign of things to come, the Tazia festival became an

increasingly contested space as influential leadership emerged from Fiji's Sunni Muslim

orthodoxy. Claiming that Tazia had degenerated into a secular, commercialized festival—

which, in any case, had been Shia from the start—the orthodox leaders forced an end to

this annual celebration. In its place, the leadership encouraged certain Sunni practices,

Self-flagellation was an expression of the ritualized mourning for the martyrs of Muharram.

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such as mildd (praise-singing for Muhammad) and the major calendrical observances of

Ramadan, Id-ul-Fitr, and Bakr'id (Ali 2004: 116). The building and worshiping of tazias,

however, continued as a domestic Hindu ritual, although this was relatively rare by the

time Mayer conducted his fieldwork in 1951 (1961: 96). Although tazid worship appears

to be extinct in Fiji today, the sanctity of these paper mausoleums among the Hindu

community was still apparent in 1979. In that year, some surviving ex-girmitiyas hoped

to see a tazid on display in the Fiji Museum's Girmit centenary exhibition, but one of the

organizers claimed that such an object was too sacred to be housed in a museum. In an

article in The Fiji Times, she stated: "The whole area would have had to be purified, and

special ceremonies performed every two days to prevent its power from harming

anybody" (Martin 1979: 3). Although it exists only in photographs and memories, the

tazid survives as a symbol of an idealized past when Hindus and Muslims shared their

festivals, religious books, and daily lives. Much of this would change during the 1920s

and 1930s.

Division and Withdrawal: Sectarian Hinduism and Colonial Society (1920s—1930s)

During the decades that followed the abolition of indenture, the "Indian

community" claimed its position in Fiji's racial triptych with "Europeans" and

indigenous Fijians through its increasing population (the ethnic majority by 1946), its

political activity (the strikes of the 1920s and the campaign for common roll voting), and

its inextricable role in Fiji's economy (through the sugar industry and general

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commerce). This "community," however, was marked by internal diversity, including

religious differences, blurred during indenture, that sectarian and regional groups now

seized and rearticulated in a struggle to reestablish their identities. Although it is

relatively easy to foreground the religious activities of the indenture period, as I have

done, we must remember that the "ruptures" of the colonial experience were very real

and their effects lasting. Despite the metaphorical power of its epics and rituals, Hindu

practice during this period was neither well-organized nor uniformly devout. In his

appeal to Indian readers, Sanadhya described Hinduism in Fiji as a thing in need of

rescue; in his narrative, the girmitiyas desired a religious life but lacked sufficient

guidance. As the emerging Indo-Fijian community embraced its own divisions—muslim

versus Hindu, Northern versus Southern Indian, reformist versus orthodox, Fiji-born

versus girmitiya, and Punjabi or Gujarati versus all other origins—its leaders continued to

turn to India for religious and ideological guidance. This came in the form of newspapers,

letters, and visiting religious leaders, which together connected Fiji to India at a crucial

moment in history. The development of Hinduism in Fiji was thus influenced by parallel

social and religious movements of the subcontinent, both its rising nationalism and

concomitant religious communalism.

It follows that sectarian conflict within the Indo-Fijian community occurred

during a period of social distancing from colonial society, a phenomenon that Kelly

describes as "Indian withdrawal" (1991: 87). Indo-Fijians increasingly managed their

own affairs, resisted legal institutions (such as marriage registration), and kept capital

circulating in Indian hands through their own network of goods and services. Resistance

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to Christian missionizing formed another aspect of this withdrawal as indicated by very

low conversion rates for Indo-Fijians. Despite the efforts of Australian Methodist

missionaries, who felt that the presence of unconverted Hindus and Muslims threatened

to undo their successful work with the indigenous Fijians, there were only 710 declared

"Indian Christians" in Fiji (out of 60, 634 "Indians") by 1921 (Thornley 1974: 141).67

Many of those that did convert, it was reported, did so for material reasons—the so-called

"rice Christians"—or for educational opportunities, and some of these were

"reconverted" (suddh karna) to Hinduism and Islam by pandits and maulvls (Kelly 1991:

114). The resistance to Christianity clearly points to Indo-Fijians' pride in their "Indian"

religions, which remained intensely relevant to their lives in Fiji. The rearticulation of the

Indo-Fijian community along lines of religion, therefore, was principally a matter of

defining and defending "Islam" and "Hinduism."

The Sunni-dominated Muslim community of Fiji was one of the first groups to

organize and set themselves apart from the greater Indo-Fijian society. In addition to

banning the Shia (though Hindu-dominated) Muharram festival of Tazia, they also fought

for Urdu education in schools and sponsored the construction of numerous mosques

around Fiji. With the formation of the Fiji Muslim League in 1926, the Muslim

community demonstrated an organizational strength and unity that was noticeably lacking

The fear that Indian religions might "corrupt" the Christianity of indigenous Fijians belongs to a larger"contamination" discourse regarding the girmitiyas and Indian settlements. For example, Sir BasilThomson, a British colonial administrator, wrote the following on the "Indian coolies": "For a wide radiusround plantations where they [the Indians] are employed the Fijians are becoming demoralized, andburglaries, larcenies, and crimes of violence are far more common, even among the Fijians, than they were"(1895: 17).

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in the Hindu community.68 In the context of Indian nationalism, which permeates the

history of colonial Fiji during the interwar years, the claiming of a religious identity was,

inevitably, a political act. Tensions turned to conflict as the reports of Hindu-Muslim

riots, bloodshed, and acts of desecration in India appeared regularly in The Fiji Times and

Herald during the late 1920s (Daley 1996: 308). As in India, Fiji Muslims began to

slaughter cows in public for Bakr'id, an act that greatly antagonized Hindus, who

consider the cow to be sacred. For their part, Fiji Hindus—particularly the Arya

Samajis—had fueled communal conflict through attempts to forcibly convert Muslims to

Hinduism (I detail this further below). Hindu-Muslim marriage became rare, each group

sought political representation in the Legislative Council, and the Hindus shed the

common greeting of "Salaam" for the explicitly Hindu "Ram Ram" (Gillion 1977: 109).

This was also a period of cultural renewal and communal coalescence for the

South Indian population of Fiji. The author and historian Raymond Pillai would later

refer to the 1930s as the "Golden Age" of Dravidian culture in Fiji (1979: 25). Although

many of the surviving ex-girmitiyas interviewed during the 1970s were of South Indian

descent, references to South Indian cultural activities specifically are scarce prior to

1920.69 As latecomers to the plantation system in Fiji, it is likely that South Indians

68 Muslim unity in Fiji would be challenged by the arrival of other sects of Islam, the most influential ofwhich has been the Ahmadi sect, which established the Ahmadiyya Anjuman ishaat-i-Islam of Fiji in 1934.The Ahmadis are considered heretical by mainstream Muslims since they claim their founder, MirzaGhulam Ahmad, as a Mahdi, or Promised Messiah (Ali, J. 2004: 148). Although they have their ownmosques, Ahmadis in Fiji to this day are considered non-Muslims by the Sunni majority.

To name the rare exceptions, the special Girmit centenary issue of the Fiji Sun included intervieweesthat mentioned playing the "Daphla" (a frame drum with South Indian associations in Fiji) and worshipping"Goddess Maha Kaliamman" (one of the three Shakti deities associated with South Indian Hindu temples inFiji). The paper also printed a photograph of a South Indian girmitiya among a troupe of "Indian dancers"in 1908—possibly an early terukkuttu (folk dance drama) ensemble (Fiji Sun 1979: 69, 71-72).

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conformed—at least outwardly—to North Indian performance genres and religious

practices, just as Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam lost their currency to North Indian-based

Fiji Hindi. However, it is also possible that practitioners incorporated certain South

Indian cultural forms such terukkuttu (folk dance drama) into established North Indian

festivals, such as Ramlila or Tazia. In any case, the visible signs of South Indian culture

in Fiji began to proliferate with the close of indenture, particularly through the

construction of South Indian Hindu temples, which were numerous by mid-century.70

As with other groups, the South Indians took inspiration from contemporary

social movements in India, where Telugu and Tamil regional nationalisms were on the

rise (Gillion 1977: 110). In 1926, an ex-girmitiya named Sadhu Kuppuswami, along with

other emerging South Indian leaders, established the Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam

(United South Indian Union for the Truthful Path) in Nadi.71 Known simply as

"Sangam," this umbrella organization emphasized education, South Indian language

survival, and cultural preservation, and built many schools and temples to meet these

goals. Kuppuswami was also a follower of Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna

Mission, and close ties between these organizations influenced Sangam's development,

including its mandate for social service, in the twentieth century and continues today.

Although ostensibly an interfaith organization, most of Sangam's activities reflect the

In fact, South Indians claim the oldest and (after its reconstruction in 1994) most impressive Hindutemple in Fiji, the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple of Nadi, which by some accounts dates to 1913 (inits original location).

A year later, the Madras Maha Sangam—later the Then India Valibar Sangam—registered in Suva as aparallel but independent South Indian organization. Relations between the two groups were amicable andcooperative (Daley 1996: 337).

1ll

Hindu majority of its constituency.72 Kuppuswami himself is credited with establishing

"South Indian-style" bhajan groups that would meet weekly in various towns and

settlements around Fiji (Somerville 1986: 73). Sangam temples became sites for

firewalking rituals (and their attendant terukkuttu performances), demonstrating the

organization's commitment to the "Dravidian village" Shakta practices of South Indian

girmitiya heritage. Following its revival in 1934, firewalking quickly became the most

visible and dramatic symbol of South Indian identity in Fiji (Brown 1984: 224). In 1941,

members of the "Telugu community" split away from the Tamil-dominated Sangam,

forming their own Dakshina India Andhra Sangam. Open to all "adult Hindu Indians,"

the Andhra Sangam, as it became known, included an active "Bhajan Section" that

promoted the Telugu Karnatak (South Indian classical) repertoire of bhakti bhajans

(Krishna 1973: 38, 46).

The most public intra-Hindu rift occurred between the reformist Arya Samaj sect

and the loosely organized orthodox Sanatan Dharm Hindu majority. Like the Fiji Muslim

League and Sangam, both groups focused on education, language maintenance, and the

uplift and representation of Indo-Fijians. Both groups also sought leadership and spiritual

guidance from India, where religious debates between the Samaj is and the Sanatanis had

raged since the turn of the century, especially in the Punjab. The leaders that arrived from

both sides quickly became involved with local politics and were viewed with suspicion

by the colonial authorities. For example, the Indian rights advocate Manilal Maganlal

Doctor was a Samaji, and the sddhu (holy man) Bashishth Muni, who led the sugarcane

72The original Sangam flag, retired in 1976, included the Hindu "Om" (in Sanskrit script on one side,

Telugu script on the reverse), the Christian cross, and the Muslim crescent and star (Govind 1979: 35).

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farmers' strike of 1921, was a Sanatani. However, the relative prosperity of the Indo-

Fijian community during the 1920s led to a shift away from issues of politics and

industry, and towards communal questions over religion and society (Gillion 1977: 104).

As another sign of "Indian withdrawal," the debates disengaged from the British and

Australian power structures of the colony, becoming an internal affair that was no less

than a battle for the spiritual "soul" of the Indo-Fijian community. At the outset of these

debates, the Arya Samaj organization was a formidable force in Fiji, especially under the

homegrown leadership of the Fiji-born Vishnu Deo.

The Arya Samaj of Fiji, first organized in 1904, formed a central body called the

Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji (Representative Society of Aryans in Fiji) after Doctor's

arrival in 1912. The Sabha continues today under this name and is directly affiliated with

the Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of New Delhi (Nardev and Somera 1975: 123). In

direct opposition to the Vaishnavite, bhakti-oriented Sanatan Dharm, the Arya Samaj

foregrounds the Vedic concept of god as nirguna (formless and without attributes),

propounds simplified religious rituals, and emphasizes jndna (knowledge) over bhakti

(devotion). During the colonial period, they pressed for social reform in Hindu society

both in India and the colonies, arguing against child marriage, caste discrimination, and

the ostracization of widows. Although it had limited appeal in India, the reformist

message of the Arya Samaj had better success among the colonies of indenture. "Calling

oneself an Arya Samajist," writes K.L. Gillion, "gave legitimacy to the facts of life in

73In this philosophical sense, jndna implies the identification of the "self with the ultimate Brahman, the

all-pervading spirit of the universe. In Kelly's analysis, jndna (knowledge) is paramount among the threepaths to god embraced by the Arya Samaj: deed, knowledge, and devotion (1991: 123).

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Fiji, where knowledge of ritual was minimal, caste restrictions barely existed, and inter-

caste marriage was frequent" (1977: 59). As in India, the Arya Samaj attempted to

"unify" the Hindus in Fiji under a common organization called the Hindu Maha Sabha.

This organization included other local groups, such as the Kabir Panth, but was

dominated by the Arya Samaj, whose "militant" reputation made the Sanatan Dharm

leadership uneasy.74 Formed in 1926—the same year as the Fiji Muslim League—the

Hindu Maha Sabha was clearly a response to Muslim solidarity; and yet, claiming, as it

did, to represent the majority of Indo-Fijians, the Maha Sabha was also an attempt to

form a body that could function in the colony as the "Indian" equivalent to the indigenous

Fijian Great Council of Chiefs, which, although a political body, was decidedly Christian.

At its height in the late 1920s, the Hindu Maha Sabha achieved a nominal unity,

but its influence was largely restricted to the Suva area in southeast Viti Levu. It was here

that Arya Samaji Hindu Sahgathan Sabhas (Hindu Consolidation Organizations) emerged

as the aggressive vanguard of the unification movement. Although not officially endorsed

by the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, these groups followed the call from the Arya Samaj

in India to "masculinize" Hinduism (which had become "effeminate" under foreign

invasion), and employed their tactic of combining sahgathan (consolidation) and suddhi

(conversion) in Fiji (Kelly 1991: 131). Arya Samaji religious leaders, such as Shri

Krishna Sharma and Thaku Kundan Singh Kush, arrived from India to support these

endeavors, which increasingly stirred controversy and attracted the watchful eye of the

74As an example of "dominance": Vishnu Deo, the famous Arya Samaj pandit and leader, wrote the Hindu

Maha Sabha's constitution. Still, the stated goal of the Maha Sabha was to form "an association wherein allHindus could meet, irrespective of sectarian differences, and work hand in hand to satisfy commoninterests" (Somerville 1986: 73).

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colonial authority. As a part of the sahgathan movement, Arya Samaj is attempted the

forceful conversion of Muslims, Indo-Fijian Christians, and even some indigenous Fijian

Christians to Arya Samaji Hinduism (Gillion 1977: 109).75 Their efforts extended to the

social and economic boycotting of orthodox Hindus who did not support the sahgathan

movement. Of the various Arya Samaji missionaries, Shri Krishna Sharma had a lasting

influence, in part because he understood the charismatic power of combining religious

discourse with musical prowess. He toured Fiji, preaching about Vedic truth and the evils

of Christianity and arguing through song against the adoption of "Western" culture,

which he saw as corrupting, especially to women (Kelly 1991: 136). Muslim leadership

in Fiji complained bitterly to the Colonial Secretary: "The bulk of the Hindoos are carried

away by the charms of the music of the Arya Missionary (Pundit Sree Krishna Sharma)

whose harmonium acts as a magic wand to their less intelligent minds" (Gillion 1977:

140) 76 Ultimately, the rift over the sahgathan movement and the arrival of fresh Sanatan

Dharm missionaries from India shattered any hopes of a unified Hindu front in Fiji.

Debate and Coalescence: The Rise of Sanatan Dharm (1930—1970)

By 1930, the orthodox Sanatan Dharm Hindus—the majority among Indians in

Fiji—began to organize into small, regional organizations, especially in the sugar belt of

As a corollary, the Arya Samaj also attempted to "cleanse" the rituals of Hinduism of the cross-religiouscharacter they had developed during indenture. For example, Kelly cites an episode from the historicalrecord in which a Muslim who "could expound Ramayan as good as a Pandit" was, by 1930, forced to giveup his annual presentation of Ramlila due to communal agitation stirred by the Arya Samaj (2001: 346).

From a letter written by X.K.N. Dean, secretary of the Fiji Muslim League, in 1929. A harmonium is aportable hand-pumped organ commonly used in Indian religious and folk music.

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western Viti Levu where the majority of ex-girmitiyas had settled.77 One of these groups,

the Sanatan Dharm Sabha of Veilolo (in the district of Ba), sponsored the arrival of the

Sanatani pandit Ram Chandra Sharma, who, together with Pandit Murarilal Sastri,

pledged to organize the Sanatanis of Fiji and defend the orthodox religion against the

Arya Samaj. Like Shri Krishna Sharma, his Arya Samaji counterpart, Ram Chandra

Sharma utilized his musical skill to propagate his religious message. As the author of

over thirty religious books, mostly collections of bhajans, he was received in Fiji as a

"Kirtan Visarad," or expert in the art of devotional singing. To commemorate his arrival,

he composed a special bhajan entitled "Bharat se Fiji dtd hai," or "He Comes to Fiji

From India" (Somerville 1986: 77). Like many girmitiyas, Sharma came from the United

Provinces, so his emphasis on Ram-bhakti was well received by the majority of Fiji

Sanatanis, who shared his North Indian heritage. During his five-year tour of Fiji, he

became famous for his trademark rendition of the bhajan "Raghupati Rdghav Raja Ram"

("Lord Ram, Chief of the house of Raghu"), which was a favorite of Gandhi's and widely

associated with his Swaraj movement (ibid.: 78). By foregrounding this bhajan (and

particularly its second verse: "God or Allah is your name"), Sharma connected himself

and his Fiji audience to Indian nationalism and Gandhi's message of religious tolerance.

This sentiment, together with Sharma's policy of inviting Muslims and Christians to

The Romanized spelling of "Sanatan Dharm" in Fiji varies, and alternatives include "Sanatana Dharma"or "Sanatan Dharam." As mentioned earlier, the phrase derives from sanatan (eternal) and dharm (religion,but also righteous action, duty, virtue, justice, etc.). A follower of Sanatan Dharm is called a "Sanatani"(Sanatani).

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Sanatan Dharm events, was considered treacherous by the militant wing of the Arya

Samaj (Gillion 1977: 110).

In his book on the subject, A Politics of Virtue, Kelly points out that the debates

between the supporters of Sanatan Dharm and the Arya Samaj in Fiji—especially at their

height between 1929 and 1932—centered on the themes of sexuality and marriage

(1991). Both indirectly, through their religious discourse at public events, and directly,

through a written exchange on religious topics that was later read aloud in a public forum,

Sanatani and Arya Samaji apologists placed morality at the center of the debate over the

future of Hinduism in Fiji. Deo, in particular, pressed the Sanatani representatives on the

usual Arya Samaj reformist issues, such as child marriage and widow remarriage, but in

1931 he went further, attacking the Puranas—texts held sacred by the Sanatanis—for the

"gross indecencies and impure practices of most filthy and unnatural description" that

they claimed to be the actions of gods (Kelly 1991: 5).78 The material concerned the sex-

play of Krishna, but also Shiva, which is generally interpreted by bhaktas (devotees) as a

metaphor for the union of god and devotee. In an attempt to ridicule these texts, and thus

discredit the moral base of Sanatan Dharm, Deo published an account of the debates,

complete with graphic excerpts from the Sanskrit texts under question. In an ironic twist,

the colonial government then brought obscenity charges against Deo for publishing this

material, and the judge overseeing the case instructed both the Sanatanis and Arya

Samajis to immediately cease public debate (ibid.: 221 . "By the middle of 1932," writes

Kelly, "the Arya Samaj had moved from its presumed leadership of Fiji's Hindus to

78Deo wrote these words in a letter to the Governor of Fiji.

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status as a sect, warned to leave the other Hindus alone. And Vishnu Deo was locked out

of electoral politics for years" (ibid.: 6).

Thus through a combination of government pressure and its own internal

contradictions, the Arya Samaj retreated from the public stage, along with its Hindu

Maha Sabha, turning its focus to education. Nevertheless, in regions where the Arya

Samaj had generated a following, the debates continued on a smaller scale in the form of

song competitions. Based on field research among rural Indo-Fijian settlements on Vanua

Levu—the more remote of Fiji's two main islands—Donald Brenneis and Ram Padarath

describe "song challenges" between Sanatani and Arya Samaji factions, which they claim

were common at the height of missionary activity (1920s and 1930s) and still occurred

occasionally in the early 1970s (1979: 58). The contests they observed either arose

informally at social events, such as weddings, or were organized by the participants in

advance through formal invitation. In both cases, the factions formed themselves into

performance ensembles, each with a designated singer, and spent the better part of the

night challenging the details of their opponent's faith and rigorously defending their own.

The singers would begin with bhajans that exalted their respective faiths, before moving

on to gdyan ("songs"), which were usually locally composed, making full use of jungll

bat ("jungle talk") otherwise known as Fiji Hindi (ibid.: 59). As the night went on, the

singers, through their gdyan, would begin to combine attacks on the customs of the

opposing group with personal insults, sometimes composed on the spot. This brief

excerpt from an Arya Samaji gdyan follows a typical critique of Sanatani practices:

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They fight among themselves and worship ghosts.They are the disciples of scoundrels, I'll tell you all about them.Yet another of their teachers worships statues;they ring the bells and wake the sleeping people.All those who take their knowledge from such a teacher,about those scoundrels I'll let everyone know.79

Song challenges would usually end when one party could not adequately respond to an

attack, and despite the increasingly personal nature of the insults, most ended without

violence or permanent discord in the settlement. The authors explain, "Because song

challenges are artistic performances controlled by a strict traditional etiquette, rather than

everyday communication, singers can raise such important issues in highly insulting ways

without enraging their opponents and their audiences" (Brenneis and Padarath 1979: 57).

Thus, unlike the scathing public debates between Deo, Sastri, and others, song challenges

created a "safe space" for debate governed by mutually agreed upon ground rules and a

temporary suspension of the usual patterns of accusation and offense. While this may

account for the longevity of the song challenge tradition, such confrontations between the

Sanatanis and Arya Samajis appear to be a thing of the past. The song competition

format, however, remains an important indo-Fijian institution (see chapter 7).

As the Arya Samaj failed during the 1930s to redirect the course of Hinduism in

Fiji, the followers of Sanatan Dharm emerged as a better-organized, more clearly defined

group. Following the earlier successes of Sanadhya and Muni, the torch was passed to the

Kirtan Visarad, Ram Chandra Sharma. Throughout his stay in Fiji, Sharma avoided

79Brenneis and Padarath 1979: 61. Since Padarath is himself a follower of Arya Samaj, only Arya Samaji

bhajans and gdyan appear as examples in this article, a fact fully admitted by the authors. The original FijiHindi text is not provided.

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controversy, praising the Arya Samaj for their accomplishments even as he traveled the

countryside preaching Sanatan Dharm. He even won some praise from colonial officials

for his amelioratory role in the factional conflicts.80 With the aim of establishing local

Sanatan Dharm training centers with Sanskrit education, Sharma launched "Rishikul"

ashrams in Suva and Labasa. These would evolve into important "Indian" primary

schools, but with the emphasis shifted to an English- and Hindi-based curriculum

(Somerville 1986: 80). Sharma is also credited with organizing the first Sanatan Dharm

"Maha Sammelan" (Fiji-wide conference) in Ba in 1934, which was very successful in

terms of uniting and reenergizing the various regional Sabhas. The three-day event

produced a list of "Principles and Rules to provide Unity of Purpose" and adopted

various resolutions, including an appeal to the colonial government regarding proper

cremation facilities and a request that local Sabhas have the opportunity to approve

pandits before they are registered as marriage officers.81 The next year, Sharma held the

Maha Sammelan in Nadi at the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple in an effort to bring

South Indians—who were well represented by the Sangam organizations—into the fold

of Sanatan Dharm. He believed that through mutual worship under the Sanatan Dharm

banner, unity could be achieved between the North Indian majority and the South

Indians. "To bring about this unity," he said to the gathered crowd, "I have been

For example, J.R. Pearson, the Secretary for Indian Affairs in Fiji, wrote of Sharma: "I should say atonce however, in spite of the bitterness aroused and at times of considerable provocation, Pt. RamChandra's influence tended strongly on the side of peace and at the same time towards friendly tolerance ofthe followers of other religions" (Bilimoria 1985: 129).811

The ten "Principles and Rules" called for: propagation of the Vedas and Puranas, better Sanskriteducation, more religious teachers from India, the establishment of temples, protection for orphans,widows, and cows, fellowship between Hindu sects, welfare for Sanatani members, and provisions forreligious training or the funds to send children abroad for this purpose (Somerville 1986: 83).

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preaching so hard for the last five years that my harmonium is almost out of order, and

my voice has become hoarse" (Somerville 1986: 84). Despite his efforts, South Indians

were slow to respond to his call, and the Sangam organizations turned instead to new

arrivals from the Ramakrishna Mission of Madras.

Sharma's most enduring contribution to Hinduism in Fiji lay in his emphasis on

Ram-bhakti and his mission to organize Sanatani orthodoxy around a central text:

Tulsidas' Ramayana, the Rdmcaritmdnas (Kelly 1991: 211). He was known to preach

widely on topics from the Ramayana, singing his own arrangements of the epic's most

instructive episodes.82 Upon returning to India, Sharma produced an account of his

experiences in Fiji, published in Hindi under the title Fiji Digdarshan ("Fiji Survey").

Sharma described, with great approval, the widespread popularity of the Ramayana in

Fiji, which was already evident upon his arrival in 1930: "[T]he singing and telling of the

Ramayan every day, and especially at festivals, in religious places, and even in the homes

of these Hindus, continues to today."83 The indenture-era Ram katha (Ramayana katha,

recital) gatherings had continued in the Indian settlements, where dedicated groups now

met on a regular basis to expound on religious topics and sing the bhakti repertoire. As in

northern India, these groups were called "mandalis" (mandll), meaning a "small circle" or

"group," and differed in specialty, including "bhajan mandalis," "Faag mandalis" (for

Holi), and, most numerous, "Ramayan mandalis." Sharma, during his five years in Fiji,

worked hard to increase this trend, and he would be credited by the future leadership of

For example, he advertised his "Sari Sumitra" as "a song setting of the Lanka book of the Ramayan"(Somerville 1986: 78).

This book, published in 1937, was not available to me. The translation is by John D. Kelly (1991: 211).

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Sanatan Dharm with the growth of Ramayan mandalis in nearly every Indian settlement

(Somerville 1986: 87). As Kelly points out, Sharma believed that Tulsidas' text was

divinely inspired for the express purpose of guiding and sheltering the vulnerable Indians

of the indenture system, an eventuality very distant from the sixteenth century (2001:

347). In his own words, Sharma described Tulsidas' Ramayana as the "fifth Veda in the

colonies," adding, "In foreign countries the solution for the protection of Hinduism is the

Ramayan" (ibid). While the extent of Sharma's influence on the organization of

Hinduism in Fiji is difficult to gauge, he remains one of the first to articulate the

Ramayana's central position in Fiji Sanatan Dharm, which was well-established by mid-

century.

In both rural settlements and towns, Ramayan mandalis grew steadily in number

during the 1940s and 1950s. As the constellatory Indian settlements matured into

semiautonomous "villages" (gaon), the Ramayan mandali took its place among the local

bodies of rural social organization: ad hoc pancdyats, cane harvesting gangs, school

committees, and youth associations. Membership in these organizations tended to

overlap; for example, a Ramayan mandali might form from a particular cane gang or as a

subsection of the local youth association (Mayer 1961: 111). The mandalis varied in size

and ambition, with better-organized mandalis functioning as temple committees that

oversaw the construction, upkeep, and event schedule of the local mandir (Hindu

temple). Others engaged the local Sanatan Dharm community through a variety of

activities that ranged from screening religious films imported from India to sponsoring

local appearances by India-based pandits. The fundamental activity of every Ramayan

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mandali, however, was the weekly recitation of the Rdmcaritmdnas, which was sung

aloud by all members present to the accompaniment of musical instruments. By the

1950s, the ensemble character of the mandali had more or less taken its modern form: the

locally made tamburd (single-stringed lute) had been supplanted by the imported

harmonium (portable hand-pumped organ), the dholak (a double-headed barrel drum)

now served consistently as the primary membranophone, and various idiophones filled

out the rest of the ensemble, including the manjlrd (hand cymbals), dahda tal (struck iron

rod), kanjari (tambourine), and kdrtal (wooden clappers). I discuss these instruments in

more depth in chapter 6, and I cover the religious and musical activity of Ramayan

mandalis in chapter 7.

The Ramayan mandalis were essentially independent entities with tenuous ties to

their regional Sanatan Dharm Sabha, which in turn lacked coordination at the national

level. The Sanatan Dharm Rishikul Maha Sabha, situated in Samabula, Suva, claimed to

represent all Sanatanis of Fiji, but in actuality their influence was limited to Suva and

southeastern Viti Levu. After the departure of Ram Chandra Sharma in 1935, the annual

Maha Sammelans had ceased. In 1955, Swami Devendra Vijay, a protege of Sharma,

arrived in Fiji for a two-month tour of Sanatani preaching and singing. Vijay's impact

was such that he is still remembered fondly by some of my older fieldwork consultants.

One recalled how Vijay traveled "from village to village" telling "spellbinding"

narratives of the Ramayana and Mahabharata from behind his harmonium. He provided

me with a taste of Vijay's influence:

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During his discourses, he started explaining to the people that it isimportant that you eat your food and keep yourselves healthy. But [it] ishundred times more important that you have a shower in the morning sothat your body is clean. Then he says, "It is one thousand times moreimportant than even a shower that you do a prayer, because that cleans youfrom inside.... Do you know that there is a presence of god everywhere?... Light a dlyd [oil lamp]. If you don't have a diya, light an incense stick,but do that every morning prior to leaving your house." That wasinfluential.... There were so many houses that did not light a lamp, did notdo a prayer—they started, and that continued.

Vijay's visit also had the effect of renewing calls for a Fiji-wide, centralized Sanatan

Dharm organization that could coordinate the activities of the Sabhas and the Ramayan

mandalis and establish a local training institute for pandits (Somerville 1986: 125). In

1958, Guru Dayal Sharma, a Fiji-born educator and journalist, succeeded in calling a

Maha Sammelan in Suva that brought together a truly representative body of eighty

members from fourteen Sanatan Dharm Sabhas. With a unanimous decision, the meeting

established the Akhil Fiji Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha, which switched to its current

name, the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji (Representative Society of the

Revered Sanatan Dharm), in 1966. As Ian Somerville points out, from the start,

Brahmans occupied the highest positions in the Pratinidhi Sabha, and this trend was

reflected in the district Sabhas. Certain mandalis, proud of their independence, their non-

Brahman membership, and their pracharaks (pracdrak, lay preachers), perceived this

development as a threat (Somerville 1986: 100, 127). In general, however, the Pratinidhi

Sabha was welcomed by the Sanatani community and hailed as the first national body to

represent the majority of Hindus in Fiji. In 1968, with a large portion of its resources

going into education and the annual Maha Sammelan, the Pratinidhi Sabha established a

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special branch to oversee religious matters called the Shri Sanatan Dharm Purohit

Brahman Sabha. As its name suggests, this Sabha sought to organize Brahman pandits

and purohits (family priests) into a central organization responsible for temples, the

calendrical dates of rituals and festivals, the registry of marriage officers, and related

matters (ibid.: 135). Therefore, as the nation entered its era of independence in 1970, the

stage was set for the efflorescence of Sanatan Dharm Hinduism in Fiji, which, on closer

inspection, revealed a subtle tension between the "popular" orthodox traditions stemming

from the indenture experience and the Brahmanical, "Sanskritizing" forces embraced by

the new organizing bodies. At the center of this debate were hundreds of Ramayan

mandalis and their cherished text, the Tulsidas Ramayana.

Conclusion

As the Indo-Fijian community took shape under colonialism, from the days of

girmit to the era of relative prosperity in the settlements and towns, the debate over what

it meant to be "Hindu" consistently dominated identity discourse about what it meant to

be "Indo-Fijian." Under the transformative system of indenture, Indians from various

backgrounds resisted the colonial brand of "coolie" by salvaging and cultivating their

religious identities from what meager sources were available: a few religious texts, some

emerging self-taught leaders, and their own collective memory of myth and ritual. In the

face of both physical and psychological hardship, both Hindus and Muslims sought

shelter and guidance through their religions, which they shared with each other through

mutual participation in rituals and festivals. In this regard, Tulsidas' Ramayana emerged

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as an important text, modeling moral ideals through the actions of its central characters

and legitimizing the girmitiyas' experience through its metaphors of exile and return. The

Ramlila, together with the festivals of Holi and Tazia, symbolized the triumph of

righteousness over oppression through annual celebrations that brought the community

together and paraded Indian achievement.

Just as religion sustained the girmitiyas during indenture, it also became the

source of division in the period that followed. During the interwar years, Muslims unified

as a group apart from Hindus, South Indians reclaimed a culture distinct from North

Indians, and Hindus in general engaged in sectarian battles over not just the

representation of their religion in Fiji, but its fundamental nature. This was also a period

marked by "Indian withdrawal" from colonial society as the nascent Indo-Fijian

community reconnected with India and the influential forces of Indian nationalism. The

most heated public debates occurred between the reformist Arya Samaj and the orthodox

Sanatan Dharm, whose Indian missionary and Fiji-born apologists placed moral issues at

the center of their confrontation over Hinduism.

Ultimately, the Arya Samaj faded into the background, and Sanatan Dharm

Hinduism emerged from the debate period as a more unified, organized religion,

representative of the majority of Hindus in Fiji. Much of this unity of practice owed to an

emphasis on Tulsidas' Ramayana as a central text, and by mid-century, musical

ensembles dedicated to exegesis of the Ramayana text—called Ramayan mandalis—were

commonplace in Indian settlements. By 1970, the Sanatan Dharm leadership in Fiji

articulated a Hindu identity for the masses that owed much to continuous contact with

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India even as it embraced the rituals and festivals inherited from the girmitiya. During the

independence period, the subject of the next chapter, the Ramayan mandali would

become the preeminent institution of Sanatan Dharm Hinduism in Fiji. However, it would

also become a site of contestation between the egalitarian inheritance of indenture and the

Brahmanical revival of Hinduism's post-independence efflorescence.

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Chapter 5. Hinduism in Contemporary Fiji: Bhakti and the Centrality of the Ramayana

As discussed in chapter 1, this dissertation does not attempt a comparative

analysis between Hindu practices in Fiji (as a node in a religious diaspora) and India (as

the religious homeland). Apart from the methodological infeasibility of such an

approach—what particular "Hinduism"? in what particular locations? from which

particular time period?—the rewards of formal, comparative analysis do not directly

inform the central aims of my research questions. I am, however, intensely interested in

the degree to which Indo-Fijians situate "India" in their own discourses about Hinduism,

both as an imagined wellspring of culture and a site of continuous, transnational

attachment. Following chapter 4, which traced the historical development of Hindu

practices in Fiji during the colonial period, this chapter focuses on the post-Independence

milieu and the salient characteristics of Hindu ideology and practice observed during my

fieldwork period that inform (and are in turn informed by) their associated musical

genres. Engaging, as it does, subjects who position their religious practices vis-a-vis

numerous variables of time and place—with a corresponding discourse on religious

authority—this chapter takes as its point of departure the following question: Does

Hinduism in the diaspora invariably beget a, somehow fundamentally distinct, diasporic

Hinduism?

The canon of multidisciplinary scholarship on the "South Asian" or "Indian"

diaspora—which, like diaspora studies in general, proliferated rapidly during the 1990s—

dedicates a considerable amount of attention to religion alongside related issues of

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ethnicity, gender, class, politics, and cultural reproduction. A subset of scholars,

reasoning that "Hinduism has emerged as a core feature of ethnic consciousness and

community mobilization (even into political spheres) among Indian migrants and their

descendants," speaks specifically of a "Hindu diaspora" (for example, see Vingadassamy-

Engel 1992; Parekh 1994; Sooklal 1996; Baumann 1998; Rukmani 1999; and Vertovec

2000) and localized Hinduisms (see van der Veer and Vertovec 1991 and Kurien 2007).84

Some diaspora theorists, such as Robin Cohen, prefer to view religion as a "cognate

phenomenon" to diaspora, providing "additional cement to bind a diasporic

consciousness" but lacking a sufficient narrative of homeland and return to constitute a

"diaspora" unto itself—although he concedes that exceptions include the Jewish and Sikh

diasporas (1997: 189). Steven Vertovec, author of the monograph The Hindu Diaspora:

Comparative Patterns (2000), defends the Hindu diaspora concept based on the

continued centrality of the Indian subcontinent as a site of sacred history and geography,

held by the nine million Hindus outside of India in "sentimental respect if not spiritual

reverence" (4). However, it is this very centrality of India that leads Bhikhu Parekh to

criticize the concept of "diasporic Hinduism." He writes:

It is striking that overseas Hindus have remained religiously parasitic onIndia, importing its movements and cults but neither transforming them inlight of their needs, nor throwing up a new movement fashioned in thecrucible of the diasporic experience, nor even adding new gods andgoddesses to their pantheon.... In this sense there is no diasporicHinduism, a distinct form of Hinduism created by overseas Hindus in thelight of their unique experiences and needs. (1994: 612)

84 The quoted statement is by Steven Vertovec (2000: 18).

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Therefore, in Parekh's strict interpretation, entities such as "Caribbean Hinduism" or

"American Hinduism" must not only account for their particularism but also contribute

something of their essence to the greater whole if they are to transcend mere membership

in a diaspora and become truly diasporic.

Regarding Hindu practices in Fiji, the observations of "outside scholars" have

tended to follow a comparative schema, interpreting Hinduism in Fiji vis-a-vis their own

previous research in India, a second location in the South Asian diaspora, or both.85 In

general, writers such as A.W. McMillan and Jim Wilson, although separated by several

decades, identify the same points of divergence from subcontinental Hinduism: the lack

of pilgrimage sites, the paucity of sddhus and other holy persons, and the disintegration

of the caste system (McMillan 1944: 7; Wilson 1979: 88). Wilson (who takes as his

subject "Fijian Hinduism") concludes that Hindu practice in Fiji "basically continues and

develops Indian practices and beliefs" with differences "no greater than those between

Hinduism in different parts of India" (1979: 89). Adrian C. Mayer, who conducted his

fieldwork in the early 1950s, noted that the regulation of ritual activities had shifted from

the India-born village elders to the Fiji-born men of the second and third generations.

Complaints from the girmitiya elders, although respected, met with a discourse from their

juniors legitimizing local Hindu practices by virtue of their Fiji birthright: "Any

comparisons made between customs seen in India and their Fiji variants met with no

or

For example, A.W. McMillan, a missionary and colonial Hindi press monitor, had previously worked inthe Central Provinces and Banaras state of India; Adrian C. Mayer, a British anthropologist, had written hisprevious monograph on Malabar, Central India; Chandra Jayawardena, a Sri Lankan anthropologist,approached Fiji as part of a comparative project with Indian culture in Guyana; and Jim Wilson, a NewZealander religious scholar, contrasts his study with the "Indian Hinduism" that he had observed previouslyin North India.

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response, or the reply that the people were Fiji Indians and did not care what was done in

India" (1961: 187; emphasis added). Ultimately, Mayer is most interested in the manner

in which local Hindu rituals reflect and enforce the various social relationships and

institutions that characterized the rural Indian settlements of mid-century Fiji—

comparative schemata, therefore, held little value. Subsequent anthropological work

addressing Hinduism in Fiji (discussed below and elsewhere in this dissertation) followed

a similar course, treating Indo-Fijian Hindu practices as locally situated and (only) locally

meaningful. (See, for example, Jayawardena 1971, 1980; Brown 1981, 1984; Brenneis

1985; Kelly 1988a; and Trnka 2002a, 2002b.)

While the distinction between practices in a "Hindu diaspora" (with the implied

centrality of India, both real and imagined) and a thoroughly localized "diasporic

Hinduism" may be academic, Indo-Fijians themselves produce an analogous discourse

regarding power and authority in their religious lives, as we hear in the Mayer quote

above. Historically, as documented in chapter 4, the "naturalization" of Hinduism in Fiji

through its practice and regulation by the Fiji-born generations coincided with influential

and relatively consistent contact with India and India-based Hindu reform (and counter-

reform) movements through travel and media. The rise of Tulsidas' Ramayana, the

Rdmcaritmdnas, as the authoritative text on bhakti and morality in orthodox Hinduism

(Sanatan Dharm) owes to the confluence of these phenomena in Fiji.

I suggest that the elevation and reverence of a single text—believed, as I

demonstrate later in this chapter, to be a compendium of all the major Hindu scriptures—

de-centered the primacy of geographic place (i.e. India or Fiji) as the site of religious

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authority. In tandem with this shift, claiming spiritual and moral authority in Fiji's Hindu

community became, in part, a matter of regulating the ritual performance of the epic and

controlling its exegesis. The actors involved in Ramayana performance (i.e. weekly

recital, kathd, Ramlila, etc.) include Ramayan mandalis (egalitarian singing groups),

pracharaks (lay preachers), pandits (Brahman priests), and the Shri Sanatan Dharm

Pratinidhi Sabha (the Fiji-wide orthodox Hindu organization). The operative discourse,

therefore, became one of "Sanskritization," or more accurately, "Brahmanization." In

the context of the Indo-Fijian two-caste society (functionally, Brahmans and all other

Hindus), I use this term to denote the long-held perception of the Brahman pandit as a

seat of inherent sanctity, the final authority on matters of religion, and the only person

qualified to perform the requisite Vedic rituals essential to the practices of Sanatan

Dharm, including some Ramayana gatherings. But more to the point, Brahmanization

suggests a history wherein these Vedic rituals became "required" in the first place.

In the academic literature, the degree to which Brahmanization constitutes a

"bottom-up" or "top-down" phenomenon depends on where the scholar locates agency in

the transformation. For example, many writers, following M.N. Srinivas, describe

Brahmanical practices as "models" that are "emulated" by lower caste Hindus as a

gesture towards social mobility, while others emphasize the force of Brahmanical power,

capable of appropriating lower caste practices or holding them to "higher" standards. For

Sanskritization, first formulated and later expanded by M.N. Srinivas (1952), refers to the processwhereby lower caste groups aspire to the beliefs and practices of higher caste groups, especially Brahmans,in an effort to raise their social status. Examples include a move toward a vegetarian diet, the worship of"Sanskritic" deities, and the employment of Brahmans in ritual events. Although Srinivas and others usethe terms distinctively, many scholars employ the terms Sanskritization and Brahmanizationinterchangeably. I return to the issue of Sanskritization and music in chapter 7.

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example, Richard King, while discussing nineteenth-century constructs of "Hinduism,"

defines Brahmanization as "the general process whereby non-Brahmanical forms of

Indian religion are colonized and transformed by hegemonic Brahmanical discourses"

(1999: 170). In Fiji, the performance and exegesis of the Ramayana has the potential both

to challenge and reify the forces at play in Brahmanization, as the discourse moves

between the Brahman and non-Brahman agents that control its transmission.

This chapter, therefore, presents a detailed overview of contemporary Hinduism

in Fiji, drawing on various perspectives—those of my consultants, other scholars, and my

own—that position the "essence" and "authority" of beliefs and practices between

multiple locations: in India, in Fiji, in the Ramayana, in the Brahmans, in the lay

preachers, on the internet, and so on. Whenever appropriate, I dwell on those particular

aspects of Hindu practice that dovetail with musical performance. The first section

describes the most salient characteristics of Hinduism in Fiji in terms of ideology and

ritual, which are central but not exclusive to the bhakti-dominated Sanatan Dharm

practices of the Indo-Fijian majority. The second section discusses the roles of

individuals and the variety of religious leadership among Hindus in Fiji, particularly in

regard to the continued valorization of the Brahman caste. In this section, I also survey

the Hindu landscape of Fiji, which emerged out of the indenture period through the

recognition of "sacred geography" and the building of temples. The third section focuses

on Tulsidas' Rdmcaritmdnas, which, as the Sanatani "Hindu Bible," holds the key to

understanding local structures of Hindu thought and practice. After a brief overview of

the epic itself, including its history and literary structure, I examine its central role in

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Indo-Fijian life and music. The final section analyzes the discourse of "official

Hinduism" in Fiji as presented by the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha, Fiji's

nationwide orthodox Hindu organization. I suggest that the Sabha, which has a achieved

a nominal unity among Sanatanis, demonstrates an increasing interest in an emerging,

globalized form of "universal" Hinduism that differs in many respects from the locally

developed traditions of Ram-bhakti and Brahmanical orthodoxy.

Aspects of Hindu Belief and Practice: Ritual

Following 1970, the year of Fiji's independence from Britain, Hinduism enjoyed

a visible surge on the national landscape, manifest primarily in the building of new

temples and an increase in the observance of annual festivals. John D. Kelly describes

this phenomenon as the "Hindu efflorescence," which he attributes in part to the self-

confidence of the independence era and the increased disposable income of the Indo-

Fijian business community (1988a: 641-42). A third explanation, provided by Carolyn

Henning Brown, suggests that the rise in ritual activity, particularly the firewalking

festivals, was the result of "ethnic competition." As a practice of the South Indian

minority, the ritual served (as it does today) as a statement of spiritual (and cultural)

power directed at both the North Indian majority and the indigenous Fijian population,

who coincidentally have their own tradition of firewalking (Brown 1984: 225).

on

A sudden rise in the public visibility of Hinduism in Fiji after independence is supported by ChandraJayawardena's fieldwork during the 1960s, which paints Hindu practice in Fiji as relatively private andhome-based. Jayawardena notes, for example, a lack of Hindu temples, household puja (regular worship),jhanda (red flags flown over Hindu households), and public bhajan singing (1980: 435)—all of which werecommon during my fieldwork period.

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In 1974, following a successful campaign by various Hindu groups, the

government declared Diwali a national holiday, and the "festival of lights" took its place

on the calendar alongside Good Friday, Easter, Christmas, and the Prophet Muhammad's

Birthday. Efforts at Hindu education proliferated in the Hindi media—mostly

newspapers, radio, and pamphlets—and new pan-Hindu organizations, like the Fiji Hindu

Society, sought to inform their constituents about the ancient Sanskrit history that imbued

their rituals with meaning. The efflorescence spiked in 1979 with nationwide celebrations

marking the centenary of Indian arrival in Fiji, events described as nothing short of

"cultural sabre rattling" by the author Raymond Pillai (1978: 1). One of my senior

fieldwork consultants provided his own views on "ethnic competition," suggesting that

the military coups of 1987 and the subsequent era of Christian nationalism spurred an

atmosphere of religious rivalry:

A lot of churches came up after the coup. So, the Indian communitythought, "Why are we sitting here? Let us educate our people." And sincethen, almost every small community has got a Ramayan mandali.... EveryTuesday, a couple of families will get together for Ramayan recital.... Ifthe neighboring group doesn't do that, then the talk will go on that theyare non-religious.

Competition, whether between ethnic groups or neighbors, is certainly part of the

explanation for the apparent religiosity of Indo-Fijians today, but this section focuses on

the more internal attributes that characterize Hinduism in Fiji as a devotional practice

dedicated to both the worldly and spiritual uplift of the individual, the family, and the

community.

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According to Fiji's 1996 Census of Population, the most recent to provide data on

religion at the time of writing, about 76 percent of the Indo-Fijian population identifies as

"Hindu," although it is interesting to note the sectarian designations: Arya Samaj, Kabir

Panthi, Sanatan, Satya Sai Baba [sic], and "Other Hindu."88 The large number in this

latter category likely includes Fiji's sizeable ISKON (Hare Krishna) following, but it may

also indicate a reluctance on the part of Hindus of South Indian heritage to identify with

the "Sanatan" category due to its association with North Indian heritage. Muslims, with

their own internal divisions, account for about 16 percent of the Indo-Fijian population,

followed by Christian groups with 6 percent. In respect to the total population of Fiji,

Hindus claim 33.5 percent, down from 39.8 percent in 1976, and it is important to

remember that Hindu practices "effloresced" despite a parallel rise in Indo-Fijian

emigration. The salient aspects of Hinduism in Fiji, generally applicable to all sectarian

groups, follow what Raymond B. Williams calls the "four primary media for transmission

of Hindu traditions" both in India and overseas: rituals, exemplary persons, temples, and

texts (1992: 4). I begin with ritual and address the latter three in the sections that follow

below.

Hindu "ritual," broadly defined, refers to consecrated behavior, including any

cultural performance that is somehow demarcated by its participants as heightened,

purposeful, or invested with meaning. In this sense, ritual acts in Hindu life range from

As listed, each group's percentage of the total Hindu population is: Sanatan (74 percent), Other Hindu(22 percent), Arya Samaj (4 percent), Kabir Panthi (less than 1 percent), and Satya Sai Baba (less than 1percent). Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, Population by Religion and by Race—1996 Census of Population.Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj/Social/religionstats.htm. I return to these sectariandesignations in the concluding section of this chapter.on

The 1976 figure from Fiji census reports is quoted by Somerville (1986: 26).

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the daily utterance of a personal mantra to the annual observance of nationwide festivals

like Holi and Diwali. The same is true, of course, for life-cycle celebrations, particularly

for birth, marriage, and death, which involve rites of passage—religious ritual in its most

classical sense. In fact, in the devotion-oriented milieu of Hindu Fiji, the vast majority of

musical practices are situated in ritual or, from another perspective, constitutive of ritual

themselves. This is not to suggest that "everything is ritual," only that individuals make a

conscious distinction between acts of mundanity and acts of purposeful devotion. For

example, a dholak player, even if he or she is practicing alone, will usually take a shower,

put on clean clothes, and say a prayer to Sarasvati before sitting down with the

instrument. A key anthropological discourse about ritual describes such ritualistic action

as a framing device that distinguishes the "profane" and "sacred" worlds; yet, as Clifford

Geertz suggests, ritual also serves to collapse these two worlds for the participant,

temporarily merging the mundane, imperfect self with the cosmological, ideal divine.90

Hindu ritual may demarcate sacred space, but it also provides the opportunity for

transformation, both of the individual soul and the greater society. The rituals of Holi,

Ramlila, and Tazia during the indenture period, discussed in chapter 4, are cases in point.

Other rituals of the Hindu domain, such as Ram katha, wedding ceremonies, Ramayan

path (recital), and bhajan singing are examined in chapters 6 and 7.

In the Bhagavad Gita, which next to the Rdmcaritmdnas is the second great Hindu

text of Fiji, Krishna himself identifies the three disciplined paths to union with the divine:

90"In ritual, the world as lived and the world as imagined, fused under the agency of a single set of

symbolic forms, turn out to be the same world, producing thus [an] idiosyncratic transformation in one'ssense of reality...." (Geertz 1973: 112).

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karma-yoga (meritorious actions or rituals), jnana-yoga (pursuing sacred knowledge), and

bhakti-yoga (loving devotion to god). All three are crucial aspects of Hindu ritual in Fiji,

although as should be clear by now, bhakti is held most dear and dominates the practice

of both North and South Indian devotees. As chronicled in the previous chapter, this

orientation owes to the bhakta stock of their girmitiya predecessors, the transformative

experience of indenture and resettlement, the enduring legacy of the Ramayana, and

continuous (although sporadic) contact with Sanatani pandits from India. As C. J. Fuller

observes, Hinduism, unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, "postulates no absolute

distinction between divine and human beings" (1992: 3). Bhakti is about communion

with a personal god achieved through a duty- and perfection-oriented devotionalism

manifest not only in ritual but also in various realms of daily experience. For example,

both Kelly and Susanna Trnka note the relationship between bhakti, labor, and

capitalism. Kelly quotes one of his fieldwork consultants: "Work is worship. Do your

duty 100%. This is the most faithful Hinduism for a householder" (1988a: 7). While

Kelly articulates this relationship vis-a-vis the influence of colonialism, Gandhian

thought, and the Sathya Sai Baba movement, Trnka situates the labor-bhakti discourse as

a response to the violence and looting that followed the 2000 coup. "Labor is valued for

what it means in terms of one's relationship to God," she writes, adding that the sweat of

physical exertion "becomes as much as an offering as the incense, flowers, and prasad

(food offerings) that form the Sanatan puja" (2002b: 79).

In the ritual context, however, it is believed that the gods and goddesses respond

most directly—and with the greatest kindness—to those devotees who sing their praises

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or make the music they find most beautiful. In Fiji, continuing a tradition of praise

singing that dates to dawn of the bhakti movement, devotees sing bhajans (bhajan, solo

devotional hymn), kirtans (klrtan, leader-chorus devotional hymn), and verses from the

Ramayana with great passion and enthusiasm. Shalen, a Sanatani devotee and music shop

owner in Lautoka, offered me the following analogy: "Suppose you want to go from here

to Nadi town, you have to catch a bus or a taxi. And as simple as that, if you want to

know God, it's the way: you'll be using bhakti bhajans to get nearer to God." In turn, the

act of selfless singing draws god closer to the devotee. Jyoti, a young woman singing

kirtans at a Krishna Janmashtami celebration (Krishna's birthday), told me, "When you

sing it, they like it more. The god says, 'She's singing for me, I'll come and listen to

her."

Similarly, Shakta (goddess) worship, primarily the domain of South Indian

Hindus, involves a fading Tamil devotional repertoire that increasingly depends on

wordless renditions by sehnai (double-reed aerophone) and dhappala (frame drum)

ensembles (see Figure 6). This music accompanies the devotees as they subject

themselves to the rites of annual Shakta festivals, which include flesh piercing,

flagellation, firewalking, and other "miraculous" acts of devotion (see Figure 7).

According to participants in these rituals, the music of the ensemble (particularly the

relentless drumming) helps them maintain a singular focus on the goddess and leads them

into a near-ecstatic state, which in Hindi they may describe as jos (boiling, passionate, or

91These are local spellings; please see chapter 7 regarding the "South Indian" status of these instruments in

Fiji.

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ardent). Ultimately, however, the music is performed for the goddess herself, for it is

believed that she is pleased (khusi) by this music, especially the drumming. As one

dhappala player informed me, "When we play nicely, Draupati gets very happy. She

likes this drum."92

The success of any act of devotion, be it a daily prayer or bhakti bhajan, hinges on

its ritual framing, which Hindus articulate in terms of purity and contamination. The

prerequisite for any individual seeking communion with god is a "clean/sincere heart"

(saf dil), an internal condition achieved through regular prayer and the avoidance or

negotiation of "polluting" elements or actions. In Fiji, as Chandra Jayawardena observes,

hereditary caste is no longer a significant variable in this respect, and objects and actions

become polluting mainly in the context of ritual. He writes, "Purity/pollution values

distinguish individuals, not groups, and identify temporary, not permanent or hereditary,

states" (1971: 105; emphasis added). Trnka, through her experience with a women's

kirtan club, demonstrates how concepts of purity transcend the individual, however,

becoming a matter of communal concern. "Upholding, enforcing, and negotiating the

moral imperative of being saf [clean]," she writes, "constitutes one of the activities by

92Draupati, the heroine from the Mahabharata, is the patron deity of firewalkers. She probably represents a

Sanskritic addition to the Shakta festival, which is more generally dedicated to Mariamman, a Dravidianvillage deity from the "popular" tradition (Brown 1978: 225). Another participant told me that the"Mariamman pujd and the dhappala are together like husband and wife."

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which Hindu women and men in Upahar Gaon produce a sense of locality and turn

spaces into morally meaningful places and communities" (2002a: 81).93 In Tmka's

Figure 6: Dhappala player. Suva, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

analysis, the negotiation of ritual cleanliness involves a range of conceptual antonyms,

including maila ("dirty") and chuta ("contaminated").

Individuals may be considered maild if they are unwashed in the literal sense, but

also if they have consumed meat or alcohol or, in the case of women, are menstruating.94

Footwear is routinely removed before entering any temple or domestic space in which a

93A women's kirtan club is an all-female affinity group that meets regularly to sing from the Ramayana or

perform religious songs at weddings and other events (see chapter 8). "Upahar Gaon" is Trnka'spseudonym for the Nausori-area neighborhood where she situated her fieldwork.

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Figure 7: Firewalking Devotees. Processing around the temple following the annual firewalking puja.Devotees also endure flesh piercing as a testament to their faith. Sangam Mariamman Temple, Suva, Fiji,2006. Photo by K Miller.

puja will take place or any ritually demarcated area, such as the firewalking pit or

Ramlila ground. A strict vegetarian diet is rare among Indo-Fijian Hindus, as chicken,

goat, and mutton are staples in the local cuisine (the majority still devoutly avoids beef),

but a vegetarian fast is expected for days of heightened religious activity. I was often

asked if I had eaten any meat on the days that I attended pujas, Ramayana recitation, or

temple events (until it became widely known that I was habitually vegetarian). A minor

crisis occurred at a firewalking puja in Lautoka when fish was discovered in several

94In some cases, devotees will abstain from sexual activity as an additional sacrifice. I noted this only

amongst devotees participating in major festivals, such as the annual firewalking puja and Ram Naumi.Trnka records that the menstruation cycle of each woman in the kirtan club was common knowledge to allmembers, and degrees of non-participation in ritual was a matter of communal regulation. In the case ofimportant annual festivals, like Ram Naumi, women consulted each other or even health professionalsregarding the correct combination of birth control pills needed to temporarily stop menses (2002a: 107).

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store-bought cans mislabeled as tomatoes. Since the cans were opened in the makeshift

kitchen on the temple grounds, the presence of the meat threatened the state of purity

achieved by the devotees. The officiating pandit promptly ordered the disposal of the

entire feast under preparation.95

The condition of chuta, on the other hand, is generally applied to individuals from

households where a recent birth or death has occurred, as these phenomena have an even

greater potential to "contaminate" others (Trnka 2002a: 99). For a negotiated period,

often in consultation with a pandit (usually five weeks for a birth and up to one year for a

death), the household and extended kin group of the new mother or the recently deceased

will stay away from pujas and festivals or celebrate them in a muted fashion (see Figure

8). This period of ritual seclusion or temperance, which in the case of death is also a

mourning period, can have a significant affect on community organizations, such as the

Ramayan mandali. Upon the death of a mandali member, the entire group will cease their

weekly meetings for a certain period in observance of the loss and its associated ritual

contamination. One mandali that I worked with abstained from singing the Faag

repertoire during the forty days of the Holi season due to a member's death; another

mandali forwent the nine days of the much-revered Ram Naumi festival; and a women's

kirtan club that I knew had not met for nearly a year due to the death of a senior

member. Thus, the preservation of a saf, or ritually clean environment for Hindu

95"Devotees Find Fish in Canned Tomatoes." The Fiji Times, May 26, 2006.Most Hindus in Fiji also observe the annual period of pitr-paks, the latter (darker) two weeks of the

Hindu lunar month Bhadom (August-September) reserved for the remembrance of ancestors. Religiousactivities, such as pujas and Ramayan path, generally cease for this period.

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Figure 8: Ritual Cleansing. Hindu brothers shave their heads in a river following the mourning period fortheir deceased father. Lautoka, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

worship, is assured for all through a combination of self- or community-regulated

distancing (in the case of chuta) and spatial-temporal framing (in the case of maila). For

example, a yellow thread (called kahgan) tied around a devotee's wrist for the nine days

of Ram Naumi commits the wearer to abstain from meat, alcohol, and sexual activity for

the duration of the festival, just as the rope that demarcates the Ramlila ground preserves

that space for the ritually-sanctified actors.

In addition to polluting substances and conditions that endanger the efficacy of

Hindu ritual, there remains in Fiji a concern over antagonistic, polluting agents or evil

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forces, especially among the older generation. McMillan describes an earlier era when in

the case of sudden illness among Hindus, he suggests, "the question uppermost in the

thoughts of those concerned is not ' What has caused this illness?' but ' Who has caused

it?'" (2003 [1943]: 22). Still, the notion of sorcery and malevolent spirits has kept its

place in contemporary Hinduism, even as it is relegated to the margins of officialdom and

given the status of superstition by most Indo-Fijians. Sometimes called Indrajdl

(roughly, "black magic"), these practices involve sorcerers (ojhds) and a whole

constellation of protective amulets, cursed objects, and evil glances. For this reason,

babies and young children are routinely outfitted with protective bracelets and special

tilaks (auspicious marks) on their foreheads and cheek. Such magic-religious and

charismatic phenomena fall into a class of practices identified as "popular" Hinduism by

Vertovec, since they are practiced and maintained by the lay believers of the community

(2000: 41). Other examples in this category include non-Brahmanic healing rituals and

exorcisms, pujas for Indra in times of drought, and the occasional rites for pre-Christian

Fijian deities such as Degei (discussed in chapter 8).97

Vertovec contrasts "popular" Hinduism with "official" Hinduism, which he

defines as "a set of tenets, rites, proscriptions, and prescriptions which are promulgated

through some institutional framework" (ibid.). His intent here is to replace the "Great

Tradition/Little Tradition" dialectic of previous scholarship on Hinduism—dominant

97Indeed, the marginal world of popular Hinduism creates a space in which Indo-Fijians and indigenous

Fijians (among others) may co-participate in ritual, both seeking spiritually powerful solutions tosometimes desperate situations. Kelly notes that some of the most potent ojhds (by reputation) are SolomonIslanders residing in Fiji (1988a: 109). A Brahman pandit might lead the worship of Indra in appeal forrain, but I have included it in this category because of Indra's marginal position as a Vedic god in Bhakti-dominated Hindu Fiji.

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during the latter half of the twentieth century—with a set of terms that speaks more

directly to the issues and conditions of the Hindu diaspora. In doing so, Vertovec

emphasizes the mechanisms through which religious authority is achieved and

maintained—the issue is not the degree to which a particular practice is inherently

"Sanskritic," but the degree to which it is subsumed and regulated by the dominant

institutional force. Essentially all of the major Hindu rituals and music traditions that I

analyze in this dissertation depend, in one way or another, on the "institutional

framework" of official Hinduism in Fiji, articulated variously by individuals, Ramayan

mandalis, and Fiji-wide Hindu organizations. As mentioned above, discourses (and

counter-discourses) of official Hinduism in Fiji tend to dovetail with the issue of

Brahmanization, since Brahmans are a central force in the institutionalization of Hindu

practices. This brings us to the second and third media in the transmission of Hindu

traditions: exemplary persons and sacred places.

Aspects of Hindu Belief and Practice: Revered Men, Sacred Places

Religious leadership in Fiji's Hindu communities relies on a variety of individuals

operating under a range of titles, including pandit, pujari, purohit, and pracharak. The

particular title reflects the individual's domain of religious authority, and the restrictions

placed on this authority are enforced through a discourse on caste in contemporary Fiji

that preserves Brahmans as the hereditary custodians of Hindu ritual. But what of the

others?

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Various scholars at various times have focused on the issue of caste in Fiji (Mayer

1961; Jayawardena 1971; Brown 1981; Kelly 1988a; and Grieco 1998), and all have

basically reached the same conclusion. With the important exception of Brahmans, caste

no longer functions as a system in Fiji, having virtually no impact on occupation, diet,

dress, residence, or social activity.98 Caste did not, however, simply disappear. It

persisted in Indo-Fijian society as "feelings of difference," in the words of Mayer, "rather

than actual difference," and continued to be a consideration in spouse selection (1961:

160). In 1975, Rajesh Chandra conducted a survey of households in a rural Indian

settlement in western Viti Levu and found that about 40 percent could provide

information about their (sub)caste heritage, although nearly all were farmers by

occupation (1980: 35). In a detailed analysis of the data available at the time, Brown

determined that 47 subcastes (jdti) survived in Fiji, at least nominally, although they were

widely dispersed and often very small in number. She notes that the six largest subcastes

follow an endogamous marriage pattern (marrying within their subcaste population)

about 65 percent of the time on average, but this is essentially an historical statement

since her findings are based on studies from between 1951 and 1972 (1981: 323)." Much

like the Caribbean, the caste system in Fiji provided, in the words of V.S. Naipaul, "the

rules of a game that was only occasionally played" (1961: 67). Caste in contemporary Fiji

98The important exception, as pointed out by Kelly and Grieco, is the Fiji Gujarati community, which as

"free" migrants maintained close ties to India, thus preserving the regional subcastes of Gujarati culture.99

These six jdti are: Chamar (low, leather-working caste), Thakur (high, land-owning caste), Brahman(high, priestly caste), Ahir (middling, cow-herding caste), Gaundan (high, land-owning caste), and Madiga(low, South Indian "tribal" group).

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outside of the Brahman category persists as a vestige of a former social order, a faded

template for evaluating others as "high" or "low."

Certain subcastes, including those known to have immigrated to Fiji, are

associated with particular musical genres, which have traditionally formed a key aspect

of their communal identity. For example, the Ahir jati, a middling agricultural subcaste,

are renown for singing birahd, a folk-music genre from the Bhojpuri-speaking region of

North India. Although the Ahir formed a relatively high percentage of Fiji's girmitiya

labor force, birahd did not develop into a widely performed genre in Indo-Fijian society,

although it may have influenced the local performance style of other genres like Fiji

1 nn

qawali (Brenneis 1983: 70). My inquiries into the birahd genre led me to conclude that

the number of singers in Fiji who still performed the Ahir repertoire could be counted on

one hand.

During a visit to the rural area of Sabeto in western Viti Levu, a pandit with

whom I worked closely, Ranjeet Sharma, agreed to take me to record one of these aging

birahd singers. We arrived at the modest home of Ram Rattan just as the sun was setting;

Ram emerged from his cane field in a wide-brimmed hat and greeted us. After bathing,

he brought out some kava (a drink made from the yaqona root) for us to share, and he

took his drum down from a hook on the wall. The grandson of an Ahir girmitiya, Ram

was seventy-five years old when I visited him. Although he was born in Fiji, he knew

100According to Brij V. Lal's analysis, Ahirs account for 9.2 percent of the total number of girmitiyas

departing from Calcutta for Fiji (2004: 102). See chapter 7 regarding the various qawwali styles in Fiji,including Fiji kavvali.

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only a few words in English and spoke Fiji Hindi with a particularly Bihari dialect. His

drum, he said, was called hurka; it was a double-headed hourglass pressure drum about

fifteen inches (thirty-eight centimeters) in length. He slung it over his left shoulder and

struck the forward-facing drumhead with his right hand as he grasped the drum around its

"waist" with his left hand. By pushing downward on the drum in a rhythmic fashion, he

affected the tightness of the shoulder strap attached to the laces, thus manipulating the

pitch of the instrument. In this way, he accompanied his biraha, which described

Krishna's duel with Kaliya Nag, the snake king. Krishna is victorious and Kaliya,

realizing Krishna's greatness, becomes repentant. "Kaliya stands before Krishna with his

hands joined together." As punishment for polluting the Yamuna River, Krishna

banishes the chastised Kaliya to the distant island of Ramanaka, and order is restored to

1 100

Vraj. "Yasodd embraces Krishna and performs drti before him." When Ram

completed his song, Pandit Sharma demonstrated an interest in this old singer that rivaled

my own. He mused in Hindi: "The youth these days don't take on these songs." Ram

agreed, "It's true, they don't."

This drum, also called hudka (Brenneis 2000: 613), belongs to a class of similar drums found acrossnorthern India (for example, hudki, huruk, and hudukka) often associated with agricultural and artesiansubcastes.102

This story appears in the Bhagavata Purana and is a common theme in the bhakti repertoire. Yasodd isKrishna's foster-mother and arti is a gesture of worship with a lit oil lamp.

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Caste identification in contemporary Fiji, despite these few echoes in the musical

repertoire, is ultimately a matter of (1) Brahman and (2) all other Hindus.103 Furthermore,

this tenuous hierarchy of caste is exclusive to the domain of Hindu ritual activity and

shows very little correlation with the social standing and political activity of individuals.

This is an important distinction, as summed up by Jayawardena: "The Brahmin is no

longer a measure of all things; he is respected only if he is a priest (pandit)" (1971: 101).

Members of rural Indo-Fijian society, writes Donald Brenneis, cultivate a "tender

egalitarianism" based on the relatively classless nature of the Indian settlement. "In the

village all are equal," states one of his fieldwork consultants (Brenneis 1983: 65). This is,

however, egalitarianism with a difference: the rules governing social relations are

ambiguous and flexible, and degrees of inequality exist based on sex and age. Adult

males have the highest standing, but the leveling mechanisms of their egalitarian ethos

keep personal ambition in check. "A primary source of conflict is jhaln ("envy"), most

frequently occasioned not by direct insult but by another's becoming too visibly

successful" (ibid.). Brenneis demonstrates how the contexts of musical performance

create exceptional spaces in which individuals can exhibit personal skill and achievement

without upsetting the delicate egalitarian ideal of the community. I would suggest that

this phenomenon extends into the broader context of religious participation, leadership,

and sponsorship. While I would hesitate to apply Brenneis' observations to the broader

(and urban-based) Indo-Fijian society—which makes no claim of "classlessness"—there

I.K. Somerville, cognizant of the secular-sacred discourse in Indo-Fijian Hindu society, suggests athree-tiered scheme of 1) Brahmans, 2) Ram-bhakri Hindus, and 3) Secularist Hindus, for whom Hindu is acultural identity (1986: ii-iii).

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remain intriguing parallels. For example, successful (and highly visible) Indo-Fijian

business owners negotiate their public image (following this analysis) through their

conspicuous monetary patronage of Hindu temples, annual festivals, and related charity

projects.

The Ramayan mandali, as the fundamental social organization of rural Indian

settlements, developed into the "tender egalitarian" institution par excellence. It became a

space in which men, through devotion to god and in service to their community, could

increase their social standing and aspire to leadership (while avoiding the appearance of

aspiration). In both rural and urban communities, the mandali remains a training ground

for singers and religious leaders, particularly the non-Brahman pracharak. In Fiji,

"pracharak" (roughly, "preacher") is the title claimed by individuals of any caste

background who demonstrate an advanced knowledge of Hindu texts, teachings, and

rituals.104 He (or she, less commonly) is the primary text expounder of the Ramayan

mandali and is often an accomplished singer, leading three-, five-, or nine-night katha on

various religious texts or subjects. While some pracharaks are Brahman, a non-Brahman

is more likely to hold the title. In a similar way, the title of pujari (temple/officiating

priest) is open to any caste, as this position is achieved through the individual's

104The etymology of "pracharak" (pracdrak)—sometimes spelled and pronounced as "parcharak" in Fiji—

is rooted in pracdr (spreading, proclaiming, etc.), and is often translated as "promulgator," "missionary," or"propagandist." In modern subcontinental Hinduism, pracharak is the title given to fulltime preachers orpropagandists for the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), but the use of this title in Fijiappears to have developed independent of this association. The pracharak in Fiji is discussed by Somerville(1986), but not mentioned (by name) by any of the major ethnographers (Mayer, Jayawardena, Brenneis,and Brown), nor even in Kelly's detailed discussion of "religious experts" in his dissertation (1988a: 129-136). As a further point of interest, the title "pracharak" does not appear in Philip LutgendorPs extensivestudy of Ramcaritmanas performance traditions in North India; the typical titles for expounders in his studyare vyds and kathavdcak (1991).

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"miraculous" abilities and leadership skills (Jayawardena 1971: 101). The pujdri title is

especially common in the context of South Indian Hindu rituals, such as the annual

fire walking puja.

On the other hand, the titles of "pandit" {pandit, "priest") and purohit (family

priest) are generally understood to be the exclusive domains of the Brahman. Only

Brahman religious leaders are allowed to register with the Shri Sanatan Dharm Purohit

Brahman Sabha, which gives them an effective monopoly on the lucrative profession of

marriage officiant. Unlike the lay pracharak, the Brahman pandit or purohit, by virtue of

his sacred birthright, is qualified to perform the Sanskritic rites of puja (puja, general

worship ritual), hawan (fire-sacrifice ritual), and graha (astrological reading). Further,

the pandit and purohit (and, in practice, the pujdrl) are exclusively male designations.

The pracharak title is, in theory, open to women who participate in the all-female

religious associations that parallel the all-male Ramayan mandali: the mahila mandals,

nari sabhas, and kirtan clubs (see chapter 7). Nevertheless, the fixity of these titles and

restrictions is open to continuous debate in Fiji's Hindu society; Brahmans, even though

generally respected, may be privately accused of ignorance or even corruption. As Kelly

summarizes: "...religious knowledge, like cleanliness and purity, has become unstuck, an

entirely individual attribute, something any individual, Brahman or not, can develop,

something a Brahman, practicing pandit or not, need not necessarily have" (1988a: 122-

23). This discourse on the religious authority of the individual, which I examine further in

chapter 7, is key to understanding the context and meaning of Indo-Fijian musical

performance.

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The third medium of transmission discussed by Williams is the temple or, more

generally, the demarcation of sacred space. When they left North India, the girmitiyas left

behind a landscape permeated with sacred meaning: the holy Ganga (Ganges River)

flows straight through the former United Provinces, the northern girmitiya homeland;

Shiva is believed to have made his abode on Mount Kailash in the nearby Himalayas;

Krishna spent his childhood of mischief and miraculous acts in Braj, just to the south of

Delhi; and, most importantly, Ram's glorious kingdom of Ayodhya still stands (it is

believed) in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh.

Having crossed the kdlapanl (black waters), the girmitiyas and their descendents

cultivated a relationship with the Fijian landscape that both connected it to the sacred

nexus of India and inscribed it with a profoundly local significance. This process

involved the sacralization of geographic locations, the reverence for "self-manifested"

phenomena, and the building of temples and shrines. The early girmitiyas, for example,

added numerous mango, peepul, and neem trees—held to have sacred qualities by

Hindus—to the Fijian countryside and sanctified particular features of their natural

surroundings, such as the hot springs near Labasa on Vanua Levu (Gillion 1962: 147). In

northwestern Viti Levu, the Nakauvadra mountain range is believed to be the dwelling

place of Kaliya Nag, the snake king banished to a remote southern island by Krishna as

recounted in Ram Rattan's birahd above. Furthermore, through a remarkable syncretism,

Kaliya is collapsed with Degei, the precolonial indigenous Fijian snake deity, thus giving

Fiji a place in the corpus of Hindu mythology through an adaptation of local sacred

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histories. The Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji presents this myth-history

with an air of fact on their website in a section titled "About Fiji":

In Bhagwad scriptures Fiji Islands is referred [to] as "Ramnik Dweep"where Lord Vishnu's eagle Garur had brought Kaliya Naag from the HolyRiver of Jamuna in India and dropped the five headed snake in Fiji. Inancient Fijian history the same snake is called "Degei" and used to beworshipped as a God before Fijians converted to Christianity.105

In a similar way, Indo-Fijian Hindus located divinity in various self-manifested

phenomena (svayambhu), such as rock formations or other geologically formed objects

that resemble deities or their associated symbols. These objects, believed to be naturally

invested with the presence of god, are often moved into temples or, in extraordinary

cases, become temple sites themselves. The most famous example is Fiji's only Hindu

pilgrimage site (on a modest scale), the Sanatani Naag Mandir ("Snake Temple") near

Labasa, built around an impressive rock outcrop that resembles a hooded cobra. More

impressive still is the local belief that the rock "grows" several centimeters a year, a

miraculous phenomenon that has caused the temple roof to be raised four times in its

fifty-year history. The Naag Mandir is dedicated to Shiva, who is usually depicted with a

cobra slung about his neck, and the surrounding area contains other self-manifested

objects, particularly stones in the shape of Shiva's lingam, his most common abstract

representation.

Garur is more often referred to as Garuda, Shalendra Prasad, "About Fiji," Shri Sanatan DharmPratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, http://www.sanatanfiji.com/aboutfiji.htm. Accessed May 15,2007.

Most devotees, regardless of age, recall that "Cobra Rock" was "about up to my shoulder" when theywere young. Similar rounded stones, some believed to be growing, represent Mariamman, Kali, and Ganga(or other manifestations of sakti) in South Indian temples. In some cases, Hindus interpret other naturally

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Most of Fiji's oldest and most prominent Hindu temples were established by the

South Indian community (particularly the Sangam organization) and are dedicated to

various manifestations of Devi (the sakti goddess), especially Mariamman. These include

Viti Levu's two most-visited temples, the Mariamman temple on Howell Road in Suva,

famous for its annual firewalking puja, and the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple in

Nadi, an exquisite example of Dravidian temple architecture unlike any other Hindu

temple in Fiji (see Figure 9).107 The North Indian (Sanatani) community has produced

their share of temples as well, especially during the post-independence "efflorescence"

period, often due to the efforts of a particular Ramayan mandali or a local branch of the

Sanatan Dharm organization. Sanatani temples are most often dedicated to a Vaishnavite

deity (such as Vishnu-Lakshmi, Ram, or Hanuman) or a Shaivite deity (such as Shiva-

Parvati or Ganesh). Most well-established temples have a resident pandit or pujdrl and a

daily puja schedule. In practice, there is very little division between "North Indian" and

"South Indian" devotees, and both worship at each other's temples.

As a point of illustration, the history of the Shri Ganesh Mandir, a Sanatani

temple in rural western Viti Levu, demonstrates the intimate relationship between a

occurring phenomena through a framework of the sacred, even if it bears no iconic relationship with adeity. For example, a well-known singer told me that the "floating island," an uprooted piece of land thatfloats in a large pond near Labasa, will "hide" from you if you have consumed liquor the day you go tolook for it.

Unlike most South Indian temples, the Nadi temple is not a Shakta (goddess) temple. It is Shaivitetemple dedicated to Subramaniya (also known as Murugan), a popular deity in Tamil Nadu, South India.The temple's current form, dating to 1994, was designed by an architect from South India (not an Indo-Fijian) and constructed by specialists imported from Chennai for the purpose.

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Figure 9: Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple. Dedicated to Subramaniaya (Murugan) and designed inthe South Indian style, it is the largest Hindu temple in Fiji. Nadi, Fiji, 2004. Photo by K. Miller.

Hindu community and its temple. Situated in the beautiful Sabeto valley, one of my

primary fieldwork sites, the Shri Ganesh Mandir began life in 1946 as a simple "bure

temple" after a local pandit donated the land for the site. A "bure" is the traditional Fijian

thatched dwelling, and many of these early temples were also called kuti, the cottage of a

revered holy man. The centerpiece of the temple was a self-manifested stone image of

Ganesh about twenty inches (fifty centimeters) high, decorated with Shaivite forehead

markings and dressed in a silken shawl. As the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, the

deity Ganesh is omnipresent in Sanatan Dharm, and his name is invoked at the start of

any devotional act. The temple, like most in Fiji, shared its grounds with a school,

highlighting the twin values of Indo-Fijian society: religion and education. It was the site

of various community festivals, such as the annual Ramlila, and many of my older

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fieldwork consultants fondly remembered the outdoor film screenings at the temple—

mythological epics from the Bombay film industry, such as Ram Rajya, were projected

Figure 10: Ganesh Mandir. Masimasi, Sabeto, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

onto a large white sheet using a portable generator. These were called "chadar films"

(cddar, "bed sheet") and "curtain clubs." Over the years, the temple grew though

community support and individual donations, often made in the name of a deceased

relative. The temple was rebuilt in 1968 and again in 1986 after sustaining damage from a

cyclone.

In its current form, the Shri Ganesh Mandir is a single-story structure with a

distinctive four-tiered pagoda-like superstructure, bedecked with flags and painted

cutouts of elephants, devotees, and gods (see Figure 10). The original stone image of

Ganesh remains, but has been joined by a pantheon of deity statues (murti) including

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Krishna, Shiva, Hanuman, and two statues of Ganesh, in addition to numerous

lithographs of Hindu poster art depicting Ram and Sita, Sarasvati, Durga, and Sathya Sai

Baba. In fact, this multiplicity of deities is a common feature of Hindu temples in Fiji,

reflecting the devotional needs of the community. A temple may have a central or

founding deity, but it is never exclusively Vaishnavite, Shaivite, or Shakta. Most statues

are locally made in a colorful folk-art style, although statues imported from India are

highly prized and common in larger urban temples.

Tulsidas' Rdmcaritmdnas: The Heart of Sanatan Dharm in Fiji

Together with rituals, exemplary persons, and sacred places, the fourth key

medium of transmission in Hindu societies is the written word, whether in the pages of

the scriptures and epics or in the medieval poems that form the base of the bhakti song

repertoire. While there are many Hindu texts in use in Fiji today, Goswami Tulsidas'

Ramayana is unquestionably paramount in terms of its popular appeal, social didacticism,

and integral position in Sanatan Dharm as the supreme bhakti text. As the principal text

of the Ramayan mandali, it is practically ubiquitous in ritual; it is dear to pandit,

pracharak, and devotee alike; and it enjoys the same reverence bestowed on a temple

statue or holy river. As Surendra Kumar, the president of the Sri Sanatan Dharm

Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, told me, "The Ramayan is a flowing Ganga. It flows to you, it

comes to you, rather than you going to India to visit the Holy Ganga."108 Despite the

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Devotees often use such metaphors to describe the virtues of the Ramayana, and many originate fromTulsidas' own phalsruti verses (passages that describe the "fruits" or benefits that the text holds for itsdevotees). Kumar's metaphor likely reflects the following caupai (quatrain) spoken by Shiva to Parvati:

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spectacle of its annual festivals, Hinduism in Fiji is a fundamentally domestic practice,

and the endearing story of god incarnate told by Tulsidas in his poetic vernacular forms

the centerpiece of household-, neighborhood-, and settlement-based worship. Therefore,

the Ramayana itself is an important source of religious, social, and political authority, and

the mediation of this authority becomes a matter of controlling its interpretation and

dissemination. My goal in this section is to demonstrate that Hinduism in Fiji, and its

"performance" through music and ritual, cannot be understood without first

understanding the structure and significance of Tulsidas' Ramayana. As "the folksong

that became a Veda," in the words of Ramayana scholar Philip Lutgendorf, the

Rdmcaritmdnas serves the Hindus of Fiji as both an instrument of bhakti, emphasizing

devotion to a personal god, and a repository of dharma, providing moral instruction for a

life of peace and contentment (1991 : 435).

Tulsidas' Hindi (Awadhi) Rdmcaritmdnas (circa 1574 C.E.) is much more than a

mere translation of the original Sanskrit Ramayana (Ramayana) by the poet Valmiki,

which scholars generally date to approximately 200 B.C.E. Rather, it is a retelling,

elaboration, and commentary. Like its predecessor, the Rdmcaritmdnas remains in its

essence the story of Ram (or Rama), the seventh incarnation (avatar) of Vishnu, who

takes a human form to rid the world of the unchecked forces of evil commanded by the

ten-headed demon king Ravan (see Appendix 3 for a plot summary of the Ramayana). As

"You have asked Me to repeat the history of the Lord of Raghus [Ram], which is potent enough to sanctifyall the spheres even as the Gahga purifies the whole world" (prior to Doha 112 of the Bal hand).Translation from the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001: 120).

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chronicled in chapter 4, the Rdmcaritmdnas (henceforth R CM in this section) arrived in

Fiji with the girmitiyas in the company of several other religious texts, many of which

were promulgated by particular sects or reform movements. Several texts from the

Puranic (mythological) canon dealing with the lives and teachings of Krishna, Shiva, and

Devi remain popular today, including the Bhagavata Purana, Shiva Purana, and Devi-

Bhagavata Purana. The nirguna bhakti collections of Kabir and other late medieval poets

are widely available and hold a special appeal for bhajan and kirtan enthusiasts. The epic

Mahabharata is also well-known, especially its philosophical core, the Bhagavad Gita,

which invariably provides the scripture for funerary rites for Sanatani Hindus in Fiji. Part

of the popularity of the RCM stems from the fact that devotees consider it to be a

compendium of these various texts, a digest of Hindu thought containing the essence of

the ancient scriptures. For example, Kumar explained to me, "The four Vedas, eighteen

Puranas, and six Shastras are simplified in one Ramayan by Tulsidas, and it is very

simple to understand"109; and many of my fieldwork consultants echoed this statement. It

is this comprehensive authority, together with its widespread popularity, that has earned

the RCM the distinctions of "Hindu Bible," "Hindi Veda," "Fifth Veda," and so on. It

was, in fact, the Ramayana that colonial authorities introduced into the Fiji court system

for the purpose of swearing-in Hindu witnesses, and this remains the practice today

(Kelly 2001: 336). In 1999, Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry placed his hand

109This level of detail is common knowledge due to the mention of these sources in the Sri Ramayana ji ki

Arati, a song of reverence for the Ramayana attributed to Tulsidas that is sung by devotees at anyRamayana-based ritual event. The text of the song, printed at the beginning of most editions of the RCM,praises the Ramayana, which is "[s]ung by the Vedas and the eighteen Puranas, containing the essence ofthesastras and all holy books...." (from the translation by Lutgendorf1991: 72). Asastra is a revered andauthoritative treatise.

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on the Ramayana—almost certainly a copy of the RCM—to take the oath of office as

Fiji's first Indo-Fijian prime minister.

Much of the explanation for this exalted position lies in the book's origin and

structure as well as the philosophy of its author. Tulsidas (approx. 1532-1623), one of the

greatest bhakti poets of the early modern period, lived most of his life between Ayodhya

and Banaras in northern India. He was born a Brahman, but raised by sddhus who

introduced him to the teachings of Ramananda, an influential fifteenth-century swami and

champion of Ram-bhakti. Tulsidas' masterpiece, the RCM, joined a vernacular Ramayana

tradition extant since the eleventh century, including important works in Tamil, Telugu,

and Bengali, that recast the figure of Ram as fully divine and approachable through

bhakti. In the RCM, Tulsidas follows Valmiki's division of the epic into seven "books"

(kdnd), although he alters the length of each book, choosing to emphasize particular

events and curtail others. For example, Tulsidas greatly extends the first book (Bdl kdnd)

and reshapes the final book (Uttar kdnd), incorporating various mythological and

philosophical elements from the Bhagavata Purana, Shiva Purana, and various medieval

dramas on Ram, in addition to his own narrative innovations (Whaling 1980: 224). It is in

this respect that the R CM earned its place as a compendium of Hindu thought, allowing

the author to claim that his work "is in accord with the various Puranas, Vedas and the

Agamas (Tantras), and incorporates what has been recorded in the Ramayana (of

Valmiki) and culled from some other sources" (Tulsidas 2001: 2).

110Bdl kdnd, Sloka 7. Translation from the Gita Press edition.

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Tulsidas was also greatly influenced by the Adhydtma Rdmayana ("Spiritual"

Ramayana), a late fifteenth-century Sanskrit retelling of unknown authorship that

presents Ram as the supreme godhead {Brahma), incarnate of Vishnu yet beyond his

form. The full significance of this influence is discussed below, but Tulsidas also

borrowed certain literary devices from this text, including the "illusory Sita" narrative in

which the real Sita conceals herself in fire allowing her "shadow" to be abducted by

Ravan and subjected to the indignity of captivity in Lanka (Lutgendorf 1991: 7). Sita's

famed "trial by fire" is thus transformed from a test of purity to a celestial sleight-of-

hand: the shadow Sita enters the fire, the real Sita emerges. This device paves the way for

Tulsidas' most significant innovation. Unlike his predecessors, Tulsidas ends his

narrative with Rdmrdj, the blissful period of Ram's benevolent rule, and completely

excises the troubling denouement of the pregnant Sita's exile to the forest, Ram's misery,

and the eventual deaths of the story's central characters. In Frank Whaling's analysis

(1980), every major innovation by Tulsidas functioned to emphasize the primacy of

bhakti in the devotee's relationship with god, and to conclude with Ram's unblemished

noble rule created a "more satisfying moral character, and therefore his human aspects

are more appealing" (254).

As Lutgendorf observes, Tulsidas structured his narrative around the profound

metaphor alluded to in the work's title, Rdmcaritmanas, which translates as "The Holy

Lake of the Acts of Ram." The Manas, a mystical lake in Shiva's Himalayan abode,

serves as a symbol of the depth and purity of Ram's righteous actions and infinite

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wisdom. The lake is surrounded by four ghats (broad stairways) that represent the four

sets of narrators that tell Ram's story: 1) Shiva to Parvati; 2) Kak Bhushundi to Garuda;

3) Yajnavalkya to Bharadvaj; and 4) Tulsidas to his audience. Thus, the narrative of the

RCM reflects the structure of a katha, a story-telling performance, and each of the seven

books of the epic signify another "descent" into the enriching water of Ram's deeds

(Lutgendorf 1991: 20-26). The metaphor of the RCM as a fathomless body of water is,

likewise, common among devotees. One pracharak told me, "I have gone through [the

RCM] several times from this end to the other end, but still... it's like a big ocean, you

dive in, go inside, get the thing, take it out... it's very deep ... every time you read, you

get something out of it."

Beyond the epic's narrative framing, Tulsidas' most significant structural

innovation is that he composed the RCM in memorable, rhyming verses that he intended

to be sung, not simply read.111 This is no small point, since the popularity of the RCM lies

not just in its content but also in its performability. The poetic meters of the narrative—

caupai (quatrain of short lines), dohd (couplet with end-rhyming), sorathd (couplet with

middle-rhyming), and chand (quatrain of long lines)—are inherently musical and easily

adapted to a variety of melodies, ranging from the simple to the ornate. The poetic beauty

of the RCM, and particularly its musicality, correlates directly with its memorability and

enduring vitality in the Sanatani community.

Lutgendorf draws evidence from Tulsidas himself, who employs the verbs kathnd ("to recite"), kahnd

("to tell"), gana ("to sing"), and sunna ("to listen") in respect to the RCM{ 1991 : 38).

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While Tulsidas' epic poem holds an indisputably central position in the religious

lives of devotees (as I demonstrate below), the impact of the Ramayana on the social

lives of Indo-Fijian Hindus is more difficult to measure and should not be exaggerated.112

Still, as in the indenture period, the most salient of the Ramayana's metaphors maintain a

broad currency in Indo-Fijian society, particularly in the realm of political discourse. For

example, Satendra Nandan, a member of the Bavadra government deposed in the May

1987 coup, likens the demon Ravan to the soldiers who stormed parliament: "The ten-

headed monster who caused such suffering, not unlike the ten-hooded military men of

Fiji" (2001: 113). Chaudhry, the most prominent of Indo-Fijian politicians, routinely

evokes the figure of Ram as maryddd purusottama (the "ideal man"). In his annual

Diwali message of 2006, issued just prior to the December coup, Chaudhry wrote, "The

state of the nation is so critical that most of us can only look forward to more hardship

and greater deprivation. Let us draw succour, solace and inspiration from the life of Lord

Rama.113 Here Chaudhry appeals to the dual nature of Tulsidas' Ram in particular: at

once a protective, beneficent god, within easy reach of his true devotees, and the ideal

man, who teaches through his actions and words the epitome of dharma.

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the RCM, Pandit Shaligram Sharma,

an influential Indo-Fijian pracharak, published an essay in the Hindi press that succinctly

112Of course, the Ramayana narrative (and Hindu ethics in general) is but one force in a crowded field of

influences and social phenomena impacting the daily lives of Indo-Fijians. Some perspective is gained fromTrnka's observation regarding the dominance of economics in Indo-Fijian discursive responses to theviolence and property damage of the 2000 coup: "Community reactions to looting involved an almostcomplete lack of allusion to the Ramayana or the Geeta ... references to moral codes of behavior, orappeals to a sense of divine justice" (2002: 74).

Message printed in Sanatan Samachaar: Special Diwali Issue, October 2006, page 8. This is apublication of the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji.

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captures the impact of Tulsidas' work on Hindu practice in Fiji. It is worth quoting at

length:

Tulsidas put Ram Katha [Ram's story] in Hindi Doha and Chaupai, andfor 400 years it has continued to grow in popularity, because, whileValmiki's Sanskrit edition was honoured amongst the scholars, Tulsidas'sversion put in common language the most mysterious matters of theVedas, Shastras, Philosophies and Upanishads and scattered them in everyvillage, for now everyone can recite the verses of Ramayan. It has rootedout the divisions and mixups of Hindu society, because first of all, in it allclasses and castes are given equal place: to Tulsidas all persons are worthyof service, and to do so is to be a true Ram-bhakt [devotee of Ram]. Ram-Charit-Manas also does a lot to unite various sects, for here Vaishnava[Vishnu-worshipping] and Shaiva [Shiva-worshipping] are broughttogether: Shiv himself worships Ram as his Isht-deo [favored deity] andRam upholds the necessity of praising Shankar [Shiva]. So the poet hasbeen most helpful in solving this conflict,... The Ramayan is both simpleand inaccessible: whereas the simplest person can understand it and findsolutions to his problems, at the same time great minds are defeated by it.The Sanskars [rites] of Hindu dharm [religion/moral code] areresoundingly supported by it: a) Bride and Groom are seen as Sita-Ram; b)"Ram Ram" is the commonly used greeting, rather than Om, Shiv, Vishnuor any other name; c) Even at the time of lifting up the corpse (on to thefuneral pyre) we say "Ram Nam Satya Hai" [God's name is truth]; d) Atthe time of farewell we say "Ram Ram" and "Sita Ram." In this way Ram-Charit-Manas is the mirror of Indian culture and life, and the lessonstaught by it help us learn all the duties. (Somerville 1986: 58-59)114

The RCM, in Sharma's assessment, emerged in Fiji as a digest of Hindu scripture capable

of unifying various divisions in Hindu practice. Furthermore, the text is revered both as

an instrument of bhakti and a type of dharmasdstra, a series of moral prescripts and

divinely modeled social ideals.

114From his article, "Shri Ramcharit Manas ki Lok-priyata" ("Popularity of the Shri Ramcharit Manas")

published in Jai Fiji April15,1976, page 7. The original was not available to me, and the above isSomerville's translation. Bracketed explanations are mine.

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As the ultimate Ram-bhakti text, the RCM contributes to the contemporary shape

of Hinduism in Fiji in a variety of ways. First, as Sharma notes, the philosophy of the

RCM accommodates devotees of all class and caste backgrounds. In fact, Tulsidas

presents a world in which the relationship between caste and devotion is remarkably

compatible with that actually practiced in Fiji today: the Brahman caste remains

paramount in terms of ritual—"The sages and gods are propitious to him who guilelessly

serves the twice-born (the Brahmanas)"—yet devotees of any caste background or class

standing can reach Ram through their own earnest, unmediated initiative—"Candals,

Savaras, Khasas, Yavanas, Kols and Kirats, although ignorant and low, become fully

pure and renowned in all the world by repeating the Name of Ram" (Tulsidas 2001:

1000; Whaling 1980: 291)115 Thus, bhakti supersedes caste and social standing. Second,

Tulsidas promotes the reconciliation of Vaishnavism and Shaivism by making Shiva a

primary narrator of the RCM and the subject of numerous stanzas in Bdl kand. As the

sage Yajnavalkya says to Bharadvaj: "One who is not attached to the lotus feet of Siva

cannot please Rama" (Whaling 1980: 233)116 In Lutgendorf s summation, Tulsidas

achieves this resolution "through a henotheistic vision that advocates worshipping Shiva

as the Father of the Universe while making him the archetypical devotee of Ram" (1991:

10). In Fiji, as the variety of deities present in a single temple illustrates, there is

essentially no division between the worship of Shiva and the worship of Vishnu (and his

The first quote is spoken by Ram just prior to Doha 45 of the Uttara kdnd from the Gita Press Englishtranslation. The second quote is spoken by the gods in admiration of Bharat's embrace of the low casteGuha; it is Doha 194 of the Ayodhyd kand. This is Whaling's translation.116 Prior to Doha 104 of Bdl kdnd; Whaling's translation (1980: 233).

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incarnate forms of Krishna and Ram). Third, although not mentioned by Sharma,

Tulsidas provides an innovative synthesis of the saguna (having attributes) and the

nirguna (without attributes) concepts of divinity. In this respect, the RCM integrates the

philosophies of its two main influences: Valmiki's Rdmdyana, in which Ram is the

human incarnation of Vishnu and a symbol of dharma, and the esoteric Adhyatma

Rdmdyana, in which Ram is nirguna Brahma representing the absolute divine (Whaling

1980: 323). Thus, Tulsidas describes the infant Ram in the arms of his mother: "The

omnipresent god, who has neither passion nor quality, nor sensation of pleasure, and who

is from everlasting, lay a babe in Kausalya's arms, overcome by affection" (Growse

1978: 126).117 In Fiji, as in several passages of the RCM, devotees refer to Ram as Ram

bhagvan, meaning "Lord Ram" or "Ram, the Supreme Being." Tulsidas' synthesis of the

earthly prince and the formless godhead lies at the heart of his doctrine of Ram-bhakti.

For Indo-Fijian Sanatanis, the Ram of Tulsidas' devotion is an intimately knowable god,

whose embrace is desirable beyond moksa, or freedom from the cycle of rebirth.

As a dharmasastra, the R CM abounds with morally didactic pronouncements on

duty, faith, respect, and tolerance, but the text instructs best and most directly through the

actions of its central characters, who lead by example. Sanatani devotees in Fiji

commonly interpret the modeling of dharma in the R CM in terms of ideal personality

types and interpersonal relationships. In a typical statement, one singer told me, "The

117Doha 198 of Bal hand: bydpaka brahma niramjana nirguna bigata binoda I so ajaprema bhagati basa

kausalyd ke goda. This translation is by F. S. Growse.

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Ramayan is a moral scripture that teaches you how to respect people and how to live in

this society. So if you don't have respect for your brother, your mother, or the guru, you

cannot progress." Certain characters model the bhakti of devotees, particularly Bharat

and Lakshman (two of Ram's brothers) and Hanuman, his ever-devoted monkey general.

As for the central character, a pracharak described the dharma of the princely (saguna)

Ram in this way: "Ram was honor and respect. He developed himself to teach us how to

respect his father, how to respect his mother, how to respect his wife, how to respect his

brothers, and even when he killed Ravan, he gave very great respect to him." The

counterpart to Ram as maryddd purusottama (the "ideal man") is Sita as pativratd, the

pious wife whose devotion and fidelity to her husband is paramount. Indeed, the

patriarchal domestic order of oversees Hindu societies, as Bhikhu Parekh notes, owes

much to the RCM, which "played an important role in the reconstitution of the Hindu

family in the aftermath of indentured labour, and has continued to play a part in its

renewal ever since" (1994: 614). Nevertheless, Tulsidas' characters, like any role models,

are not static figures but are mutable and subject to the manipulation of the interpreter

(Hirst and Thomas 2004: 4). As with the closely related phenomenon of Brahmanization,

the question again is one of agency: are ideal social roles ascribed from above by certain

religious leaders and organizations, or are they complexly interpreted from below (and

not straightforwardly emulated) by the consumers of the epic? For example, I.K.

Somerville astutely observes that Sita may be too perfect a model for many female

devotees, who turn their attention and reverence to more realistic models of female piety

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in the epic, such as the hermit Shabari (1986: 44). I pursue this line of inquiry in the

forthcoming chapters.

Finally, the benefits of Ramayana recitation for the devotee lie in the relationship

between its role as a dharmasdstra, morally regulating the social world, and its role as a

Ram-bhakti doctrine, spiritually transforming the individual. For Lutgendorf, this

relationship contains an element of paradox:

This paradox is not experienced as confusing but rather as productive ofpeace (sdnti), understood as a state of equilibrium within the framework ofa dilemma that is ultimately irresolvable, as least in this world. Tulsidas'streatment of this dilemma, I argue, has been vital to his poem's enduringappeal. (1991:340-41)

Through the appeal of clean heart and an earnest song, the devotee shares the presence of

Ram, gaining assistance in health, success, and living a scrupulous life—achieving

contentment (or "equilibrium") in the corporal world of lived reality. As one member of a

Ramayan mandali put it, "Our objective here is to learn something from the scriptures so

that our life becomes better, so that we become better persons. We are enlightened, our

spiritual life improves, and then we can get peace."

Sanatan Dharm and Religious Institutionalism: A Field of Discourse

In this final section, I turn to the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji, the

nationwide Hindu organization that claims to speak for the majority of Hindus (and Indo-

Fijians) in Fiji. Through a network of district branches, the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha

includes the majority of Ramayan mandalis within its purview, just as it subsumes the

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majority of Brahman pandits through its sub-branch, the Shri Sanatan Dharm Purohit

Brahman Sabha. Therefore, the perspective of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha on Hindu

practice and ideology provides a critical bookend to this chapter and my survey of

Hinduism in contemporary Fiji. As Vertovec points out, the institutionalization of

Hinduism in diasporic locations tends to occur vis-a-vis other local communities and

often demonstrates "a trend towards greater self-definition (including a greater

rationalization) as to what they consider fundamental or orthodox in terms of doctrine

and ritual practice" (2000: 31). The S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, as detailed below, articulates

a particular vision of Hinduism that situates the Indo-Fijian Sanatani inheritance of Ram-

bhakti and Brahmanical orthodoxy within a more "universal" conceptualization of

Hinduism emerging on a global scale. This vision took form (and continues to develop)

in a field of discourse that includes the voices of other local religious communities and,

increasingly, the ideologies of more recent transnational Hindu organizations.

The S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, since its founding in 1958, has fulfilled its mission

to promote Sanatan Dharm in Fiji through important and pioneering work in education,

though temple building and maintenance, and through the aforementioned regulation of

pandits and mandalis. Other divisions within the organization include the Nari Sabha,

which oversees female membership, and the Sanatan Youth and Sports body, which

reaches out to youth membership through organized sports, particularly soccer. The

national body also liaisons with the media and the government to some extent, and its

membership includes politicians from both the National Federation Party and the Fiji

Labour Party. In recent years, the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha has established branches in

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New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S., creating an impressive transnational network

between Nadi, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sacramento. Even as the

organization expands, however, its sway over Sanatani practices in Fiji itself remains

tenuous—the national body struggles to keep the consistent support of some local

branches, and numerous religious leaders and Ramayan mandalis continue to operate

independently. As discussed in chapter 7, some devotees complain that the national body

is weak, distant, and ineffectual when compared to smaller, more tightly defined religious

organizations such as the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha and the Fiji Muslim League. Still, the

S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha provides an unparalleled forum for Sanatani community

development through its annual national convention, which invariably includes religious

discourse, cultural programs, a Ramayan Sammelan (performance of multiple mandalis),

and a soccer tournament.

Apart from Muslim, Christian, and Sikh organizations, the S.S.D. Pratinidhi

Sabha shares the field with at least a dozen other Hindu (or Hindu-affiliated)

organizations in Fiji, of which I will briefly discuss three: TISI Sangam, Arya Samaj, and

i in

Gujarat Samaj. Sangam is a South Indian cultural organization, although it functions in

essence as a Hindu body overseeing temples, schools, and festivals. As noted above, most

Sangam temples and activities center around goddess worship, with due place given to

Shaivite and Vaishnavite deities. The Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, although historically

important (as chronicled in chapter 4), is a relatively quiet group today with a number of

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A non-exhaustive list includes Arya Pratinidhi Sabha; Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Centre; DakshinIndia Andhra Sangam; Fiji Sevashram Sangha (Bharat Sevashram Sangha); Fiji Hindu Society; GujaratSamaj; ISKON; Kabir Panth Mahasabha; Ramakrishna Mission; Sathya Sai Baba Organization; and TISISangam.

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followers in the urban and peri-urban areas. Emphasizing Vedic Dharm, the Arya Samajis

hold weekly satsahg (worship gatherings) that involve reading and explicating the

Satyarth Prakash, hawan, and bhajan singing. These are not bhakti bhajans, however.

Arya Samajis may on occasion sing about Ram and Krishna, but they are celebrated as

instructive human figures, not divine figures. A third example, the Gujarati Hindus,

engage a similar repertoire of deities, texts, and rituals as the Sanatani majority although

they tend to worship separately in their own homes, temples, and places of business. For

Gujaratis, like most Hindus in Fiji, Diwali is the most important holiday of the year, but

rather than celebrating the return of Ram from exile they open their homes to Lakshmi,

the goddess of prosperity.

The officeholders of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, as the largest and most loosely

defined Hindu organization, emphasize its inclusiveness and point to the fact that

"Sanatan Dharm," the only defining criterion of their title, simply means the "eternal

religion," i.e. Hinduism. But as a representative body of the majority, are they a "North

Indian" organization? I posed this question to S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha President Kumar,

who replied:

Yes, but we're not restricting South Indians from being with us.... ASanatani cannot be a member of the South Indian organization, and aSanatani cannot be a member of the Arya Samaji organization ... but wedon't have any restrictions. We have got South Indians with us.... Theymay have their own Sangam organization, but they are Sanatanis.

In a similar way, the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha claims Gujarati Hindus, a community with a

highly visible business profile in Fiji. Gujarati businesses do, in fact, sponsor S.S.D.

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Pratinidhi Sabha events and publications, and their participation contributes to the

organization's claim that Sanatanis "in general are the economic powerhouse of the

nation."119

The S S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha's most public statements on the beliefs and practices

of "Sanatan Dharm" or "Hinduism" occur at their annual conferences, particularly in the

pages of its widely distributed souvenir magazine. However, the discourse here

completely bypasses local histories, concepts, and practices of Hindu worship, choosing

instead to tap into an increasingly global discourse about a universal Hindu identity

promulgated by a variety of transnational organizations. For example, the souvenir

magazine for its 2006 convention included articles titled "Nine Beliefs of Hinduism" and

"Four Facts of Hinduism" that, although authorless and uncredited, originate from the

Himalayan Academy, a monastic Hawaii-based Hindu organization responsible for the

publication of Hinduism Today}20 Virtually all of the articles on Hindu topics in the

souvenir magazine have been culled by the editor from external sources, mostly essays of

unknown authorship that enjoy wide circulation on the internet. Even the article on "Lord

Rama" focuses on the Valmiki Ramdyana rather than Tulsidas' Rdmcaritmdnas, the latter

of which, as shown, is far more relevant to Hindu practice in Fiji. While the S.S.D.

119This statement is from my email correspondence with the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha headquarters in Nadi.

The organization's National Executive Board includes Kanti Punja and Vinod Patel, two of Fiji's best-known Gujarati businessmen.120

In abbreviated form, the "Nine Beliefs" are 1) one, all-pervasive Supreme Being; 2) the divinity of thefour Vedas; 3) the cycle of creation, preservation, and dissolution of the universe; 4) karma; 5)reincarnation and moksa; 6) temple worship, rituals, sacraments, and personal devotion leads tocommunion with God; 7) knowing the Transcendent Absolute requires a guru, discipline, purification,pilgrimage, self-inquiry, and meditation; 8) ahimsa, or non-injury; 9) tolerance for other religious paths.The four "facts of Hinduism" are Karma, Reincarnation, Dharma, and Worship. Shree Sanatan DharmPratinidhi Sabha of Fiji: 47th Annual Sanatan Convention 2006 April 13-16. Souvenir Magazine, edited byShalendra Prasad.

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Pratinidhi Sabha has no official link to any India-based organization, its leadership is

rapidly developing ties to transnational Hindu groups. Launched in May 2006 along with

its new website, the Sabha's Sanatan Samachaar newsletter includes articles written by

(and credited to) the Hindu American Foundation, the Himalayan Academy, and the

Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Linking with the ideologies of these groups may have

consequences for Hinduism in Fiji beyond the definition of "Sanatan Dharm." For

example, the VHP (also known as the World Hindu Council) originated as the militant

wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an India-based Hindu nationalist

organization, and was directly involved in the 1992 destruction of the Babri mosque at

Ayodhya.121

Conclusion

The dominant discourse among Sanatanis in Fiji involves the framing and

efficacy of ritual, the authoritative power of particular individuals and groups, the

sanctity and function of places of worship, and perhaps above all, the interpretation of

sacred texts and the manner of their explication. Hindu ritual, defined broadly, involves

the cultivation of karma-yoga (meritorious actions) and jnana-yoga (sacred knowledge),

but bhakti-yoga (loving devotion to god) is valued above all, and singing the praises of

121Since 1987, Fiji has been something of a cause celebre for the VHP's campaign for the "protection" of

Hinduism in the diaspora. In 2003, the VHP organized a successful "Hindu Unity Day" in Lautoka, Fiji, butthis connection with the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha is a very recent development. In their own words, the VHParticulates its primary objective as: "To consolidate, strengthen and make invincible the global Hindufraternity by following the eternal and universal life values based on Sanatan Dharma and work for totalwelfare of humanity on the basis of the unique cultural ethos of Bharatvarsha [India]." Source: "Aims andObjectives of the Vishva Hindu Parishad," www.vhp.org/englishsite/b-objectives/aimobject.htm.Accessed May 27,2007.

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god is the most cherished form of bhakti. Devotion through ritual activity, such as praise

singing, requires the negotiation of polluting elements, such as meat and alcohol, and

contaminating states, such as association with recent birth or death. Ritual purity is no

longer a matter of inheritance, but caste survives in Fiji as a twofold system (Brahmans

and others) that is only truly relevant in the context of religious practice. The (relatively)

egalitarian Ramayan mandalis and pracharaks are the main transmitters of the Ramayana

and other sacred texts, but Brahman pandits have a monopoly on the Hindu rites of puja,

hawan, and wedding ceremonies. Hindu temples and sacred geography have respectively

sanctified and mythologized the Fijian landscape, but for the majority, Hinduism is a

domestic practice based on the "performance" of Tulsidas' Ramayana, the

Rdmcaritmdnas. As a doctrine of Ram-bhakti, the Rdmcaritmdnas serves as a

compendium of sacred scriptures, reconciles Vaishnavism and Shaivism, and synthesizes

the nirguna (formless) and saguna (with attributes) concepts of god in the figure of Ram

bhagvdn. As a dharmasdstra, the text provides a divine model of interpersonal

relationships and a didactic treatise on society, which, if followed in the spirit of

devotion, provides the devotee with health, success, and a sense of peace. The centrality

this sixteenth century text in Fiji contributes to Indo-Fijian cultural uniquity by de-

centering modern India as the gravitational center of contemporary Hinduism. However,

the regulation (and support) of Ram-bhakti practices by a national body has been a

qualified success, and an increased exposure to international media, the internet, and

worldwide Hindu organizations has encouraged a definition of Hinduism based on

sources external to Fiji. "Hinduism" or "Sanatan Dharm" in contemporary Fiji is,

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therefore, a contentious arena, a field of discourse in which the forces of "official"

Hinduism situate religious authority variably between the egalitarian ethos of Ram-

bhakti, the Brahmanical orthodoxy of ritual, and the leveling ideology of an emergent and

truly transnational "universal" Hinduism. As Vertovec observes, the traditions of

overseas Hindus constitute a "divergent diaspora" (2000: 1), but evidence suggests that

local trajectories, such as Ram-bhakti orthodoxy in Fiji, may ultimately shift again,

joining the transformative transnational conduits of the "global Hindu fraternity."

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Section III

Music, Place, and Community in Western Viti Levu

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Chapter 6.Indo-Fijian Music and the Rural Context

Following Section II, which established the historical and religious contexts of

Indo-Fijian musical performance, this chapter and its companion focus exclusively on

ethnography, emphasizing and interpreting various performance practices that I observed

during my fieldwork in western Fiji from 2005 to 2006. The northwestern leeward coast

of Viti Levu—an area known locally as the "burning west" for its hot and relatively dry

weather—corresponds to Fiji's Western Division, one of four such administrative

divisions.122 This "western side" of Viti Levu follows approximately 200 kilometers of

coastline, stretching from Rakiraki in the north to Sigatoka in the southwest, thus

encompassing the island's fertile sugarcane belt. The coastal lowlands and the mountain

valleys stretch into the foothills of the highland interior and are checkered with the

sugarcane farms of rural Indo-Fijian settlements, scattered among the nucleated

indigenous Fijian villages. Small urban centers, originally formed around the sugar mills,

remain important market towns and commercial hubs.

As discussed in chapter 1,1 divided my fieldwork between rural locations in

western Viti Levu, particularly the Sabeto settlement, and urban locations, particularly

the city of Lautoka. I have thus divided the analysis and interpretation of performance in

these fieldwork locales between this chapter, which focuses on my rural-based fieldwork,

and chapter 7, which focuses on my urban-based fieldwork. I hasten to add, however, that

this rural-urban division is quite arbitrary in terms of ritual practices and performance

122The other three are the Central, Eastern, and Northern Divisions. The Western Division includes the

provinces of Ba, Nadroga-Navosa, and Ra, and its divisional capital is Lautoka. The Yasawa andMamanuca island groups are also included in the Western Division.

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genres, as the religious and musical lives of Sanatanis in Fiji do not vary greatly between

the rural settlements and the urban towns and cities. For example, the Ramayan mandali,

the premier social institution of the Indian settlement, now plays an equally important

role in the organization of religious life in the neighborhoods of the city. Furthermore,

changes in Fiji's infrastructure, transportation technology, economic livelihood, and

media have blurred the rural-urban dichotomy, as geographer John Overton neatly

summarizes:

There is free movement from villages to cities (and vice versa), wageopportunities are numerous, there is considerable flow of goods andservices between town and country, and many of the trappings of urbanlife (electricity, radios, videos, government services) have so percolatedinto the villages that their inhabitants have everyday experience of cityliving. (1989: 9-10)

Still, I organize these chapters around the rural-urban division for two reasons.

First, there are notable differences in the performance contexts of rural and urban music-

making that bear significantly on the style, content, and meaning of these practices.

Second, in the context of steady rural-urban migration, Indo-Fijians tend to associate

certain performance genres with a romantic vision of rural life that, through the bonds of

nostalgia, maintains an aura of authenticity. Both of these themes inform the organization

of these chapters, and their explication illuminates the important connections and

dependencies between rural and urban locales. As a final corollary, the Sabeto Indian

settlement and Lautoka city, while important fieldwork sites, serve primarily in these

chapters as archetypes of rural and urban settings, and my conclusions draw from

fieldwork in various western Viti Levu locales.

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Of the three main themes of this dissertation—constructing "community" through

performance and the negotiation of 1) subethnicity, 2) national identity, and 3)

transnational affiliations—the focus here is primarily on the first and third; issues of

national identity are the subject of chapter 8. As detailed below, musical ethnography in

western Viti Levu highlights the processes by which Indo-Fijians challenge or reify

subethnic identities—particularly in terms of regional origin and religion—and reveals

the depth to which Indo-Fijian musical practices engage South Asian-based transnational

media and performance traditions. I open this chapter's focus on the rural context with a

brief profile of the Sabeto Indian settlement, before turning to the ritual and musical

activities of the Brahman pandit and the (usually non-Brahman) pracharak. The main

fieldwork foci of this section are domestic puja rites and community-based katha

(exposition/performance) of the Rdmcaritmdnas and other religious texts. The remaining

two sections examine music and the Hindu ritual calendar through a focus on Phagua

(Holi), which has strong associations with rural life and a distinct repertoire of folksongs.

The focus here is not the individual, but the "village mandali," which often draws

members from every Hindu homestead in the widely dispersed Indian settlement, tracing

the boundaries of community through celebration and song. I begin here, however, with a

brief overview of the instrumental ensemble that forms the core of most Indo-Fijian

music, including all of the genres that I analyze in this dissertation.

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Performance Fundamentals: An Introduction to the Core Ensemble

With only slight variation, essentially all Sanatani Indo-Fijian vocal music utilizes

an ensemble consisting of harmonium (portable hand-pumped organ), dholak (double-

headed barrel drum), and various idiophones. This core ensemble is at the heart of the

Ramayan mandali and accompanies the range of genres that I refer to as "local folk

music," including tambura bhajan, qawali, kirtan, lok geet (lok git), Ramayan katha,

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Ramlila, and chautal. The omnipresence of this instrumental combination in Indo-

Fijian music demonstrates its close kinship with folk and devotional music across North

India (Sahai-Achuthan 1987; Henry 1988; Jairazbhoy 1988; Tewari 1988; Manuel 1993;

Marcus 1993; and Beck 1996) and the South Asian diaspora (Myers 1998; Manuel 2000;

Pillay 2000; and Ramnarine 2001), where the harmonium-dholak-percussion ensemble is

equally prevalent. The similarities do not end there; like the music-cultures of eastern

Uttar Pradesh (from which most Indo-Fijian Sanatanis derive), Indo-Fijian music is

characterized by certain general attributes, including the predominance of vocal music,

the importance of devotional themes, and the clear division of men's and women's

repertoires (Henry and Marcus 2000: 660-61).124 I would add to this list the profound and

inextricable influence of the Hindi film industry, which has borrowed from and

contributed to the Indian folk and devotional music repertoire nearly since its inception in

the 1930s. The transnational reach of the Mumbai (Bombay, a.k.a "Bollywood") film123

I adapt this usage from field consultants who, when speaking in English, emphasize the "local"distinction of these genres to differentiate them from the Indian music (Hindi film music, semiclassical,etc.) they hear on recordings.124

In Fiji, this latter distinction is not absolute. There are several male performers of the lok geet genre,which is traditionally associated with the women's life-cycle repertoire, and there have been a few notablefemale performers of the male-dominated qawali genre including Shushil Krishna, the "Qawali Queen."

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industry led to parallel developments in Fiji, and I examine this phenomenon below and

in chapter 7.

Although I analyze particular genres and performance styles below, the Indo-

Fijian vocal repertoire demonstrates some general characteristics that performers identify

as musical fundamentals. In terms of form, songs tend to be strophic, with the textual

structure generally dictating the musical structure. In most genres, there is only minimal

vocal and instrumental improvisation, and singers employ reliable, generic formulas to

deliver the devotional or didactic message of the text. Most texts derive from the Hindu

textual canon and are often directly imported from Indian sources, and even locally

composed songs tend to follow these models and utilize a heightened speech style that

differs markedly from the Fiji Hindi of everyday use. The language of song texts may be

Standard Hindi (emphasizing a Sanskrit lexicon for bhajans and an Urdu lexicon for

qawalis), Bhojpurt (the language of the ancestral life-cycle repertoire), or Awadhi, Braj

Bhasha, etc. (the Hindi variants of the medieval bhakti poets). In terms of musical

texture, most songs are monophonic or leader-chorus, with a prevalence of heterophony

and intermittent drone and melody. The singer will often double his or her vocal melody

in a loose fashion on the harmonium or simply hold the tonic note on the instrument,

supporting the vocal line with a drone. The modal and metrical repertoire of Indo-Fijian

music—again, like North Indian folk music in general—is limited, and the terms rag and

tal, although occasionally employed, bear only a minimal resemblance to their

counterparts in the domain of Indian classical music. The melodic range tends to be

narrow, sometimes a fifth or less and rarely more than one and one-half octaves, but may

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also reflect the more expansive melodic contours of the Hindi film and semiclassical

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melodic repertoire that singers adopt through musical parody. Likewise, nearly all

Indo-Fijian songs in the local tradition utilize one of two rhythms: the eight-beat kaherva

(a variant pronunciation of kaharvd) and the six-beat dddrd, although these terms are not

widely known. However, where they lack in metrical diversity, drummers excel in

creative syncopation and technique that, in the hands of the more experienced, amounts

to an impressive display of virtuosity. Tempos alternate between slow passages, called126

tekd, and fast passages, called caltd. Finally, the timbre of Indo-Fijian vocal music is

one of its most conspicuous musical characteristics. Singers favor the high tessitura of

their natural vocal range, creating a tense, nasal, and sometimes raspy vocal timbre,

recognizable to anyone familiar with Indian folk music.

In the remainder of this section, I present a brief description of each of the most

common instruments of the core ensemble and comment on the relevant aspects of their

construction and playing techniques.

Harmonium. The harmonium, often simply called bdjd ("musical instrument") in

Fiji, is a free reed aerophone—essentially a box with hand-pumped compression bellows

and internal tuned reeds manipulated by a piano-style keyboard (see Figure 11). Although

a European invention of the mid-nineteenth century, the portable style popular in Fiji is a

"naturalized" Indian instrument, originally used by Christian missionaries but now a125

This is "parody" in the earlier usage of the word meaning borrowing or imitation without the element ofsatire, as used by Manuel (1993) and Marcus (1993). See chapter 7.

As Donald Brenneis has noted (1983: 67), these are local usages of these terms. Teka apparently derivesfrom tek (the refrain of a song), not to be confused with thekd (drum pattern representing a Hindustani tal).The term caltd derives from the Hindi word calna, "to move."

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fixture of Hindu, Sikh, and Sufi music in the subcontinent and the diaspora. The compact

design of the South Asian harmonium allows the player to sit on the floor, as all core

ensemble members do in Fiji. The equal-tempered keyboard of the harmonium is not

ideal for the characteristic glissandi and microtones of Indian music, but singers value the

instrument because it requires minimal technical skill, stays in tune, and accommodates a

127range of voice types. In Fiji, the harmonium replaced other accompanying instruments,

such as the flute, the sdrahgl (bowed lute), and the folk tamburd (plucked drone lute),

Figure 11: The Core Ensemble. Indo-Fijian devotees singing kirtan. Instruments from the left:harmonium,jhanjh, and dholak (played in the two-dholak style). Auckland, New Zealand, 2006. Photo byK. Miller.

which were often made locally. The harmonium is usually played by the singer him- or

herself, but not all singers know how to play the instrument, so often a competent

127Summarizing the concerns of earlier scholars of Indian music like A.H. Fox-Strangways, Edward O.

Henry writes that with its "widespread use the scale of the harmonium is supplanting native scales, whosedistinctive flavors will be lost forever" (1988: 208).

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musician is designated to accompany others. The continuous pumping of the bellows

leaves only one hand free to play the keyboard, but this is all that is required for the

textures of Indo-Fijian music, which generally lacks chordal accompaniment. Players in

Fiji tend to pull out the maximum number of stops for the fullest, loudest sound and

engage the octave coupler, which doubles any key depressed with its counterpart in the

next highest octave. Most harmonium keyboards have a range of just over three octaves.

Dholak. The dholak {dholak) is a double-headed barrel membranophone,

measuring about twenty to twenty-five inches (fifty to sixty-four centimeters) in length.

Along with the dahda tal, the dholak is the only locally made instrument in the core

ensemble, although some dholaks are imported from India. A dholak player is called

dholakiyd or dholk-vddak. In many cases, local carpenters carve the dholak body from

hardwood trees such as mango and jackfruit and sell them directly to dholakiyds, who

treat, cut, and apply the skins. Raju, a respected dholakiyd, told me that the smaller treble

head of the dholak should be cut from the skin of a female goat, while the larger bass

head should use the skin of a male goat; other players merely stated that the skin should

be from a goat of appropriate size. A paste called dholak masdla consisting of a precise

mixture of castor oil, kerosene, camphor, gum resin, and other spices, fibers, and

shavings is rubbed onto the underside of the bass head, giving it the deeper, resonant

sound that dholakiyds desire. The heads are attached to the drum through a network of

laces that also serve to tighten the skins (by pulling down string loops that cinch together

adjacent laces; when the dholak is not being played, the laces are left in the up or "loose"

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position). The most distinctive aspect of dholak performance in Fiji is that a single player

will usually play two separate dholaks simultaneously: one placed vertically on the floor

with treble end up, the other resting horizontally across the player's folded legs. This

innovation, which appears to be unique to Fiji, grew out of the dholakiyas' aesthetic

preference for a loud, clear, high-pitched sound on the treble head, which can only be

achieved by pulling the tightening strings so far down on the dholak that the bass head

goes "out of tune." Thus, the need arose for a second dholak with the strings tightened in

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a way optimal for the bass head. This practice appears to date to the 1980s. Dholakiyds

employ two- and three-finger strokes in addition to full-handed strokes and a non-

resonant stroke that resembles the "Ka" stroke of tabla technique. Furthermore, players

routinely manipulate the pitch of the bass head by combining finger strokes with a

pressure-slide of the lower palm, again, in a manner similar to tabla technique.

Dholakiyds refer to these strokes in onomatopoetic terms, such as thapi (for full-handed

strokes) and ghumbka or ghutka (for pressure-slide strokes). Some imported dholaks

come equipped with metal turnbuckles rather than laces, including a dholak variationcalled nal that features multilayered drumheads similar to that of the tabla.

Dahda tal. The dahda tal is a percussion idiophone consisting of two pieces, a

vertically held rod made of iron (or steel) about a meter long, and a small, horseshoe-

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Brenneis saw only the single-dholak playing style during his research up to 1984, although this wasconducted in Vanua Levu, not western Viti Levu (personal communication, 2007). A Lautoka-baseddholakiyd playing the two-dholak style appears in a photograph on the cover of Qawalis ofHari Prasad,Lautoka, a cassette produced by South Pacific Recordings (SPR 077H), which was likely released in theearly 1980s. My field consultants suggest that the two-dholak style became popular only in the last twentyyears.

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shaped beater that is used to strike it (see Figure 12). The name is quite literal, as dahda

means "stick" or "rod" and tdl means "rhythm." The player strikes the rod with the beater

by rotating the wrist and uses the free hand to dampen the vibrations by lightly touching

the rod mid-shaft, thus creating two distinct timbres. The shaft of the dahda tdl tapers

toward the upward-pointing end, maximizing its resonance, and the end that rests on the

ground curls into the shape of a hook. The dahda tdl, like other idiophones in the

ensemble, supports the dholak with ostinato patterns, and its thin, metallic yet bell-like

timbre gives the Indo-Fijian ensemble its distinctive sound. Curiously, the dahda tdl is

found in Fiji and the Caribbean today, but not in other locations of the nineteenth-century

Indian diaspora (such as Mauritius and South Africa) or in North India itself. Scholars of

Indo-Caribbean music provide various theories regarding its presence in the Trinidad,

Suriname, and Guyana, where it is generally known as dhantdl. Despite local claims that

the dhantdl is a Caribbean invention, Peter Manuel suggests that the instrument may still

be "rarely encountered" in the Bhojpuri region of India and that the earliest dhantals in

the Caribbean were in fact imported from India where they had evolved from utilitarian

devices (2000: 38-39). In contrast, Tina K. Ramnarine, skeptical of this evidence,

emphasizes historical and oral data that point to the appropriation of oxen cart rods or

household objects as the Caribbean source of the dhantdl, which was re-crafted based on

a remembered Indian model. She even cites a Trinidadian music promoter who "insists"

that the dhantdl was taken to Fiji from Trinidad, not India, most likely through an Indo-

Trinidadian laborer who re-indentured as a girmitiya in Fiji (Ramnarine n.d.). My field

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Figure 12: Dahda tal player. Lautoka, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

consultants in Fiji generally consider the dahda tal to be an "Indian instrument" that

girmitiyas recreated locally based on the available utilitarian objects that characterized

the makeshift ensembles of the indenture period. One qawali singer suggested that the

prevalence of the instrument today owes partly to the widespread availability of the steel

rods from which they are fashioned but added in a half-joking manner that the rod of the

dahda tdl serves as a threatening weapon if fights break out at late-night qawali

competitions.

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Other Idiophones. Like the dahda tdl, the other idiophones used in the core

ensemble provide a metronomic pulse through simple ostinato patterns that, when played

vigorously, contribute to the loud, bright sonic texture characteristic of Indo-Fijian local

folk music. The most common of these instruments is a pair of three-and-a-half-inch

(nine-centimeter) cymbals called jhdnjh or a slightly smaller, more cup-shaped pair of

cymbals called manjird.129 An ensemble will usually have several members playing

cymbals, whereas there is only one dahda tdl and one pair of dholaks per group. Another

common instrument is the kdrtal, a pair of wooden clappers with inserted metal discs that

is played with one hand. Finally, nearly every ensemble has at least one tambourine,

usually of the hard plastic, half-moon variety.

In the Shadow of the Sleeping Giant: The Sabeto Settlement

The area in western Viti Levu known as the Sabeto Indian settlement developed

after the opening of the Lautoka sugar mill in1903, and its history, demographics, and

land tenure are characteristic of the typical rural Indian settlement of western Fiji. The Ba

province, which includes both Sabeto and Lautoka, claimed half of all land leases to

Indo-Fijian tenants by 1911, and the valleys and coastal lowlands of the western sugar

belt remain an important region of Indo-Fijian agricultural activity (Ali 1980:21). The

Sabeto "settlement"—actually a series of farms and homesteads—originally formed

around the Luvuci Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) Company plantation, situated about

129There is some slippage of terminology regarding hand cymbals in Fiji. Some people use the terms

manjird and jhdnjh interchangeably to refer to the standard three-and-a-half-inch cymbals.

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fifteen kilometers south of the Lautoka mill. Today, the Sabeto settlement encompasses

an area with nebulous, negotiable borders, generally agreed to fall within certain

topographical boundaries of the physical landscape. From west to east, the settlement

stretches from the Queens Road, the coastal highway that connects Lautoka and Suva, to

the foothills of the mountainous interior, an expanse of about ten kilometers. The

settlement is bordered to the north by the majestic Sabeto mountain range, known as the

"Sleeping Giant" because its dramatic profile resembles a slumbering leviathan. The

southern border is less clear, dissolving into the Votualevu settlement at a point about

five kilometers south of the Sabeto range. As Adrian C. Mayer observes in his study of

Indo-Fijian rural society, homesteads on the margins of settlement boundaries establish

their membership in a particular settlement by utilizing that settlement's school, temple,

mosque, or general store, and—I would add—joining one of that settlement's Ramayan

mandalis(1961:26).

The Sabeto settlement is a picturesque landscape of sugarcane fields, rolling hills,

and narrow dirt roads, bisected by the Sabeto River that runs from the Mount Evans range

into the Pacific Ocean (see Figure 13). There are three "Indian schools," one mosque, and

one Hindu temple (the Sri Ganesh Mandir described in chapter 5). At the time of

research, there were fifteen Ramayan mandalis registered with the Shri Sanatan Dharm

Pratinidhi Sabha for Sabeto, although more unregistered mandalis certainly exist.130 The

disparate Indo-Fijian homesteads and sugarcane fields of the Sabeto settlement surround

For example, Pandit Ranjeet Sharma (based in Sabeto) told me that his services had been requested forRam Naumi by twenty-six mandalis, although some of these may have fallen within the boundaries of theVotualevu settlement.

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five indigenous Fijian villages (koros), each typically formed around a Methodist church,

a chiefs house, and a community center. Although colonial laws kept the two ethnic

Figure 13: Sabeto. Sugarcane tenant farms with backdrop of the Sabeto mountain range's "SleepingGiant." Sabeto, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

groups separate, relations today are generally good on a day-to-day basis, forming a rural

settlement pattern that Carolyn Henning Brown aptly calls "integrated separatism" (1978:

319). To this day, however, Indo-Fijians do not live in indigenous Fijian villages,

although the land that they live on and cultivate is, in most cases, leased from indigenous

Fijian land-owning groups (mataqalis) through the Native Land Trust Board. Tensions

that do emerge between Indo-Fijians and indigenous Fijians generally have to do with

issues of land tenure, a perennial source of insecurity for Indo-Fijian tenants. As long-

term ALTO land leases expire, many mataqalis are opting not to renew their lease

contracts with Indo-Fijian tenants, choosing instead to reclaim the land for their own use

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or development. Still, Indo-Fijians complain bitterly that in many cases good quality

farmland reclaimed by indigenous Fijians remains unutilized and has returned to bush.131

Although the reverence of land is commonly cited as an aspect of indigenous

Fijian ethos, we should be careful not to overlook or undervalue the deep sense of

attachment that rural Indo-Fijians maintain for land, which in many cases has been

cultivated and developed by particular families over several generations. In this chapter, I

explore just what constitutes "community" in rural Indian settlements given this sense of

attachment to particular rural places. How, for example, does musical performance

elucidate the borders of a particular settlement, contribute to the cohesion of settlement

identity, or in the reverse scenario, emphasize other criteria of belonging that circumvent

or fracture the primacy of settlement identity?

Several demographic features of Indian settlements move us toward the answers

to these questions. First, although most Indo-Fijian homesteads are relatively isolated,

there are in some locations clusters of homes or "house-groups" in which the married

children of an extended family have established their own houses near to the original

homestead (Mayer 1961: 32). "Presenting a unified front to the people in the settlement is

very important," writes Rajesh Chandra, "for if the people realise one particular house-

group is united, it will not be harassed, nor troubled by thieves" (1980: 31). Second, as

Mayer observed in his three rural case studies in the early 1950s, settlements tend to have

clusters of homesteads formed by members of a similar socio-religious group,

particularly Hindus of North Indian heritage, Hindus of South Indian heritage, and

For more on indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian relations, see chapters 3 and 8.

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Muslims of both backgrounds (1961: 28). Many of these clusters are formed from the

house-groups mentioned above, and a particular settlement will rarely have absolute

"North Indian" or "Muslim" enclaves. Third, settlements are subdivided into areas called

"wards," which invariably have Fijian names and are often named after the local Fijian

village. The Sabeto settlement is divided into five such wards: Keolaiya, Masimasi,

Naboutini, Nadele, and Sabeto. Depending on the size of the settlement, a ward will

range from 40 to 300 homesteads.132 When Indo-Fijians speak of their "village" (in

English) or gaon (in Fiji Hindi), they usually refer to the particular ward where they live,

not the settlement at large.

The Pandit and the Community: Ram-Bhakti in the Rural West

In addition to its numerous Ramayan mandalis, a rural community like Sabeto

requires the ritual services of several exemplary individuals, particularly the (Brahman)

pandit and the (often non-Brahman) pracharak. As discussed in chapter 5, only the

Brahman pandit carries the inherent religious authority to conduct the essential rituals of

Sanatan Dharm, including puja (general worship ritual), hawan (fire-sacrifice ritual),

graha (astrological reading), and birth, wedding, and funeral rites. Certain pandits also

excel at Hindu text exegesis, preaching, and singing, although most restrict themselves to

the basic Sanskritic rites of pujas and life-cycle rituals. The lay pracharak, on the other

hand, specializes exclusively in the interpretation and exposition of religious texts, which

132Unfortunately, the most recent census figures that I could find on the Sabeto wards date from 1966. At

that time, the number of "Indian households" for each ward was as follows: Keolaiya (84), Masimasi (61),Naboutini (69), Nadele (49), and Sabeto (267). The population for the Sabeto settlement was 910indigenous Fijians and 3,653 Indo-Fijians (Brown 1978: 320).

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requires a certain degree of charisma, a command of Standard Hindi, a thorough

knowledge of the Hindu canon, and—in most cases—a compelling or at least capable

singing voice. In the case of a pracharak, most listeners value the expounder's knowledge

of religious texts such as the Rdmcaritmdnas over his caste background, although

Brahmans are still strictly preferred for scenarios that require Sanskritic rites.

This section examines the role of religious leadership in a rural Indo-Fijian

community by following and interpreting the ritual activities of a particular pandit in the

Sabeto settlement. After discussing the significance of the pandit's domestic ritual duties,

particularly the annual rot-pujd for Hanuman, I turn to an analysis of the katha genre, a

multi-day exegesis of a Hindu text or story with musical accompaniment. I compare the

pandit's katha performance with that of a pracharak and demonstrate how both connect

rural communities with a vision of Sanatan Dharm that combines devotionalism with

didacticism. In addition, both men supplement their performance styles with a

transnational repertoire of devotional music, especially semiclassical Hindi film songs,

thus blurring the lines between locally-authenticated performance "traditions" and an

increasingly standardized devotional canon transmitted through the global media that is

both reflective and constitutive of a "universal" Hinduism.

Pandit Ranjeet Sharma133 and his family live in the Keolaiya ward, a relatively

isolated interior corner of the Sabeto Indian settlement, surrounded by sugarcane with a

northern view of the Sleeping Giant. Pandit Sharma is in his early thirties and, like most

133"Sharma" is the most common Brahman surname in Fiji and is widely recognized as such. Othersinclude "Maharaj," and "Mishra."

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Indo-Fijian men, has a moustache and neatly cropped hair. He has an air of easy authority

in his work, which is not diminished by the times he gets down on the floor to play a

board game with his children. I was also struck by his relentless chain-smoking. At the

end of a long, winding dirt drive stands his modest but comfortable house, constructed in

the typical rural style using a wooden frame and corrugated metal siding. There are

multiple rooms, an indoor and outdoor kitchen, and a television with a DVD/VCD

player—a staple of even the most rural homestead for viewing Hindi films and other

Indian programming. A bure (Fijian-style thatched hut) with cement walls still stands in

the yard next to the house. This structure was built by the pandit's father and is now used

as a cool, shady retreat for cane workers or the pandit's mandali. Most rural Indo-Fijian

homesteads follow a similar pattern: a modern wooden or cement house standing next to

the homestead's original bure, surrounded by a clump of fruit trees planted by the first

generation of ex-girmitiya settlers. When I met him, Pandit Sharma shared the house with

his mother, his wife, and their two children, and various animals, including chickens,

dogs, and a few head of cattle shared the yard.

Although his services are in high demand, Pandit Sharma does not make his living

as a pandit—indeed very few do. Most of his income is drawn from the harvest of the

sugarcane that he cultivates on his property (which he, like most Indo-Fijian farmers,

leases from a local mataqali). Still, Pandit Sharma descends from a respected line of

Brahman pandits stretching back to his great-grandfather, who came as a girmitiya to Fiji

from North India. This venerable history of local service to the Sabeto community shields

him from skeptics in the community that may, on occasion, doubt the authenticity of a

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local pandit's claim of Brahman heritage. He learned his craft from his father, who

passed away in 1995. As a younger man, Pandit Sharma was very musical and led a

group that specialized in popular ghazals and Hindi film songs.134 After his father's

death, he dove more seriously into the vocation of panditry, embracing the religious duty

of his inheritance. Yet he maintained his love for music and transferred his skills to the

devotional repertoire and the art of katha. He hopes that his nine-year-old son will also

become a pandit and carry on the family tradition.

Pandit Sharma is licensed by the Shri Sanatan Dharm Purohit Brahman Sabha,

the wing of the Sri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha that oversees and regulates religious

activities ranging from the date of a festival to the pronunciation of a Vedic mantra. The

S.S.D. Purohit Brahman Sabha grants a pandit license after screening the applicant to

verify his Brahman heritage. The Lautoka branch secretary states, "Our constitution

indicates very clearly a karam kaandi purohit must be coming from a Brahman Kul

(family). Our sabha takes no responsibilities for any pandit performing our religious rites

who is not a Brahman or a member of our sabha" (Sharma 2004: 10).135 Pandit Sharma's

license hangs from the rearview mirror of the small green car that he uses to travel from

homestead to homestead in the course of a (typically busy) day of pandit work. His

business card advertises his versatility: Ram Katha, Bhagwat Katha, Shiu Katha, Ramlila,

134Ghazal is a semiclassical vocal genre with an Urdu text and often features romantic themes. The genre

is popular among some singers in Fiji, although it generally requires more vocal skill and training than the"local folk music" genres.

The phrase "karam kaandi purohit" (karma-tend purohit) indicates a pandit who performs Vedicceremonial acts and sacrificial rites. Several field consultants attested to the reach of the Sabha's authorityand their ability to enforce their decrees. For example, one pandit told me that the Sabha would revoke thelicense of a pandit caught performing puja for Hanuman after 12 noon on a Saturday (the ritually prescribedtime is between 6 AM and 12 noon).

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and Ramayan, all in addition to the repertoire of Vedic ceremonies and life-cycle rituals

expected of a pandit.

He is most busy during the major Hindu holidays of Shivratri, Holi, Ram Naumi,

Krishna Janmashtami, and the Dasahrd period prior to Diwali. For example, over two

dozen Ramayan mandalis requested his services on the closing day of Ram Naumi, the

festival that celebrates Ram's birth. Although he considers Keolaiya to be his "village,"

Pandit Sharma travels to all corners of the Sabeto settlement, and occasionally beyond, to

perform his duties as pandit in the context of puja and as pracharak in the context of

katha. Most of the families that call on his services are Sanatanis of North Indian descent,

although Hindus of South Indian descent may accept a particular North Indian pandit,

like Pandit Sharma, out of respect for his abilities, out of necessity, or out of indifference

to cultural heritage.136

In addition to the Vedic rites for weddings and funerals, Pandit Sharma conducts

pujas at homesteads for various occasions, including house-warming, childbirth,

birthdays, wedding anniversaries, death anniversaries, and other calendrical Hindu rites.

While some of these pujas are directed toward particular deities, many of them are

summed up as nav-graha, rituals of renewal that, in theory, placate the dangerous

elements of astrological forces and "purify" the household in general. In the common

puja format, the pandit directs the selected family members through the procedure, which

involves a host of ritual objects and substances. The puja itself does not involve any

The more versatile pandits are familiar with the ritual requirements of both North and South IndianHindu traditions, the details of which vary in certain rites, particularly for weddings and funerals. They arefar more similar than they are different. A South Indian pandit or pujdri is more likely to be involved withthe Sangam organization than the S.S.D. Brahman Purohit Sabha.

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musical instruments apart from the conch shell (sahkh) and a small bell, and the pandit

delivers the Sanskrit mantras in a formulaic style that is best described as heightened

speech rather than song.

I have selected the rot-pujd for analysis because it includes the typical elements of

puja but also requires devotional singing on the part of the pandit. Furthermore, rot-pujd

is a fundamental ritual for all Sanatani rural homesteads, although it is relatively common

in the towns and cities as well. Rot-pujd accompanies the raising of a triangular red flag

(jhandd) in the homestead compound that honors Hanuman and signifies his presence.

Hanuman, the powerful monkey general of the Ramayana, is considered to be Ram's

greatest devotee and, therefore, his most potent intermediary. Devotees believe that Ram-

bhakti, or worship and devotion to Ram, is most successful when Hanuman is petitioned

as an intercessor figure. Hanuman is also a revered guardian figure, and is known in India

as ksetrapdla, the "guardian of the field," for his role in protecting rural dwellings from

malevolent spiritual forces (Lutgendorf 2007: 238). In Fiji, too, Hanuman's red flag is

raised to sanctify and secure the homestead compound, ensuring the monkey deity's

protection from unseen evil. Sanatani homesteads are easily identified by these red flags,

which are ubiquitous across the rural landscape of western Viti Levu.

A family will typically raise a new flag every year, leaving the old flags in place

to fade on their bamboo staves, although occasionally the head of the household will

sponsor an additional rot-pujd to fulfill a vow. Ram Naumi and Hanuman Jayanti

(Hanuman's birthday) are popular periods for rot-pujd, although the ritual may be held at

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any time of the year. Tuesdays and Saturdays are the most popular days for Hanuman

worship (and thus Ram worship)—not because they are auspicious, but because they are

particularly mauspicious. These days are ruled by "dangerous" planets (Mars and Saturn,

respectively) and therefore require Hanuman's benevolent protection.

On a Tuesday morning during the nine-day Ram Naumi celebrations, I observed Pandit

Sharma lead five rot-pujds at five separate Sabeto homesteads—the exact number that he

could fit in between 6 AM and 12 noon, the appropriate hours for soliciting Hanuman

through prayer.137 Each visit lasted forty-five minutes to an hour including preparations,

the ritual itself, and brief socializing with kava or tea. The rot-pujd took place at the foot

of the bamboo flagpole, a sacred space at the edge of the compound dedicated to

Hanuman, often situated at the base of a mango tree (see Figure 14).138 Like any space

demarcated for deity worship, this area is called the bhagwdn sthdn ("God's place") or

simply sthdn. The Hanuman sthdn varies in appearance, ranging from a modest earthen

mound at the base of the tree to a small shrine with statues (murti) of Hanuman and other

deities.139 After the fresh bamboo pole (easily measuring up to fifty feet in length) was

While there is no textual authority on this practice, Indo-Fijian pandits explain the morning worship ofHanuman through reference to a popular story about the monkey deity and his "son." Although Hanuman isa confirmed bachelor, a drop of his sweat impregnates a fish-demoness as he leaps to Lanka. Later, heunknowingly confronts his son, Makaradhvaja, during the battle of Lanka, but once their identities arerevealed they quickly reconcile. Hanuman declares that he should be worshipped for the first half of theday, and that all prayers sent after noon shall go to his son. Philip Lutgendorf relates a version of this storyas it is known in India (2007:150-51).138

In addition to providing shade, the mango tree's leaves are used by pandits as a decorative offering inpujas. Hanuman, like all monkeys, also loves fruit, and, as John D. Kelly notes, many devotees actuallypicture Hanuman sitting in the mango tree guarding their homestead (1988a: 107).

The Hanuman sthdn frequently includes a Shiva lingam because Hanuman, although the son of Vayu,the god of wind, is also believed to be an incarnation of Shiva, who bestowed a portion of himself in themonkey god in order to be nearer to Ram.

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cleansed with water, the pandit sat down before the sthan with the male head of the

household and his children and began the ritual. The pandit told me later that women,

with the exception of young girls and the elderly, should not take part in this rite because

Hanuman is a brahmcdrl, a chaste ascetic and lifelong bachelor. The rot-pujd, typical of

the puja format, involved a series of Sanskrit mantras chanted by the pandit that

accompany particular forms of "sacrifice" or offerings to particular deities. Although the

ideal puja involves a series of sixteen offerings, most pandits offer an acceptable

abbreviated format of five offerings: 1) burning incense, 2) lighting a dlya (oil lamp), 3)

placing a tilak (forehead mark), usually of sandalwood paste, on the deity image, 4)

adorning the deity with flowers, and 5) "feeding" the deity prasdd (a ritual meal). The

typical prasdd is a vegetarian mixture of sweets and fruits—offered first to the deity and

later distributed among the devotees—but Hanuman requires his favorite treat, the bread-

cake called rot that lends its name to the ritual. Towards the end of the puja, the head of

the household placed a few pieces of rot into a small sacrificial fire called hawan, and the

resulting smoke spiritually purified the compound. At the pandit's direction, he raised the

new flag into place and tied a piece of red cloth around the shaft of the pole, representing

Hanuman's lahgot (loin-cloth). The heart of the rot-pujd, however, occurred when Pandit

Sharma sang the Hanuman Callsa or "forty verses to Hanuman."

The Hanuman Cdllsd, one of the best-known poems in Hinduism, describes the

deeds and attributes of Hanuman in forty rhyming couplets. The poem is widely

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attributed to Tulsidas, and it begins with an invocatory dohd from his Rdmcaritmdnas.140

Like this latter work, the Hanumdn Cdllsd is intended to be sung (and heard) as an act of

Figure 14: Rot-puja. Pandit Sharma (right) sings the Hanumdn Cdllsd while leading a rot-pujd in Sabeto,Fiji. Photo by K. Miller.

devotion, and numerous commercial recordings from India offer the verses in a

semiclassical or filmi (cinema) style. In Fiji, many devotees memorize the poem, and

several men told me that they begin each Tuesday morning by singing the verses to

themselves (in lieu of or in addition to their daily prayer). While ringing the small bell,

Pandit Sharma sang the Hanumdn Cdllsd in a rapid a cappella style as the householder

sat in prayer before the sthdn and the newly raised flag. Unaccompanied vocal music is

140The dohd in question opens the Ayodhyd kand. Lutgendorf suggests that evidence of Tulsidas'

authorship of the Hanumdn Calisa is weak and the quality of the poem generally does not rise to the poet'sstandard, but he notes that the "spiritual authenticity" of the poem is beyond question and highly revered bydevotees (2007: 100).

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rare among Indo-Fijian Hindus, but may occur in the context of pujas where the

harmonium is considered inappropriate. Devotees use a variety of melodies and styles to

sing the poem, many of which are learned from Indian recordings that are played on the

radio and widely available in local shops. The pandit's style seemed to be dictated, in

part, by concision since he had five pujas to get through before noon. A great deal of the

poem's power, according to the bhakti principle, depends on the successful and complete

utterance of each word—the means to this end is a secondary concern.141 On average,

Pandit Sharma performed the complete Hanumdn Cdllsd in about five minutes. As the

transcription of four verses of the pandit's performance indicates, he set his lilting

melody to a simple quadratic meter, pausing periodically to gather his breath (see

Musical Example 1). After the opening dohd, for which he used the typical dohd

melody (see chapter 7), the pandit used this melodic sequence to deliver the forty verses,

emphasizing the terminal rhyme scheme of each couplet. The melodic range spanned a

minor sixth, although the majority of the song stayed within a perfect fourth. The

transcription represents the midpoint of the performance, a few verses of heightened

intensity marked by the pandit's sudden stepwise ascent to the d-flat (as transposed in this

transcription). Note that this upward shift corresponds to the words jaladhi Idhghi ("leapt

the sea"), creating an effective moment of iconicity meant to underscore the singer's

141Another, and more dramatic, example of this principle is the akhandpdth, the complete recitation of the

Ramcaritmanas in a twenty-four-hour period. Although this practice is rare in Fiji, Lutgendorf describesthese recitations in Banaras as "little more than a blur of sound" (1991: 75).142

In this transcription and all others I approximate the melodic contour using Western notation. Theactual tones as sung may waver into microtonality, although I only note the significant deviations.

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the red flag to purify the whole compound and erect an invisible parameter of protection.

In a similar way, the ringing of the bell and the occasional blow on the conch shell

trumpet serve to support and punctuate the "sonic cleansing" achieved by the utterance of

the poem. Upon completing the Hanumdn Calisa, Pandit Sharma instructed the

householder to place the rot into the hawan fire, and he closed the ritual by singing Arati

kije Hanumdn lala ki, a well-known song that accompanies arati (a gesture of worship

with a lighted diya, camphor, or oil on a dish) for Hanuman. For his services, the pandit

received his sidhd dan, a donation made by the family consisting of some uncooked

grains and rice (the traditional gift for Brahmans), in addition to a small assortment of

other items (a new shirt, for example) and a modest cash payment.

Pandit Sharma is also a respected and sought-after pracharak due to his singing

ability, his family history, and his knowledge of Hindu scriptures, epics, and lore. In this

capacity, he leads three mandalis, each with a different function: one mandali recites the

Rdmcaritmdnas on a weekly basis and sings "Faag" during Holi; one mandali performs

the Ramlila during the Dasahrd period; and one mandali accompanies his katha

performances year round. The word katha {katha) simply means "story," but it further

connotes the systematic recitation and exposition of a religious text or narrative

(Lutgendorf 1991: 115). As in India, this is a performance genre led by a specialist or

professional in the context of a devotional gathering, and it nearly always involves some

degree of musical accompaniment. The typical katha performance takes place in a single

location over the course of three or five nights with two to three hours of performance

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each night, although less common formats may last from a week to nine nights. The

venue is usually the private residence of the event's sponsors or the local Hindu temple.

Particular katha performances are based around a single deity or religious theme, and not

surprisingly, the most frequently performed is Ram katha based on the Rdmcaritmdnas.

Other types include Shiu katha (on the Shiva stories of the Shiva Purana and other

sources—see below), Bhagwat katha (on the Krishna stories of the Bhagavata Purana),

and Devi Bhagwat katha (on the goddess stories of the Devi-Bhagavata Purana). The

goal of katha is siksd, or "instruction," which the pracharak accomplishes through his

pravacan, or "exposition"; as in any Sanatani ritual, however, the katha's overall

structure emphasizes the act of bhakti—ultimately, the ritual services the devotional

needs of the community.

Each evening begins with the ceremonial raising of the yellow "Sanatan flag,"

invariably to tune of "Jhandd uncd rahe hamdra"("We Raise our Flag High"), a famous

Indian patriotic song redressed with lyrics that glorify Sanatan Dharm. The pracharak

frames the katha proper with the requisite mantras, prayers, and drati, and the final day

will feature an elaborate hawan, sometimes called "mahd-yajna" ("great sacrifice").

Brahman pracharaks, such as Pandit Sharma, can handle all of these events single-

handedly, whereas non-Brahman pracharaks will need to arrange for a Brahman pandit to

lead the hawan.

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This song, also known as "Rastriiya jhandd abhinandan" ("In Praise of our National Flag"), emerged asa very popular patriotic song during India's early independence period and remains a staple in therepertoire of school children. The chorus (jhandd uncd rahe hamdrd), which remains in the Indo-Fijianversion together with the melody, has developed its own life as a nationalist slogan, deployed in contextsranging from political rallies to cricket matches.

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In order to describe Pandit Sharma's pracharak style and discuss its significance, I

present here a brief analysis and interpretation of a three-night Ram katha that he led in

Sabeto. The event took place in the yard of a rural homestead under a temporary open-air

shelter of corrugated metal sheets supported by bamboo or wooden posts (simply called a

"shed"). At the far end of the shed stood the stage, a raised dais called an dsan decorated

with various flashing colored lights, balloons, and a hand-painted backdrop of gods in

repose. Several framed images of Hindu poster art stood along the front of the dsan

among offerings of food, incense, and flowers. The pandit took his seat near the center of

the dsan behind his harmonium, dressed in a white dhoti and kurtd with an ochre ram-

nam shawl—the characteristic attire of the Brahman pandit (see Figure 15).145 To his left,

the mandali members sat rather inconspicuously among their instruments and microphone

stands (amplified sound through portable P.A. speakers was expected for even the most

rural of katha performances, usually pushed to the limits of volume). The audience spread

out under the shed, sitting on sugar sacks sewn together into large mats in groups divided

by gender. At the very front, one family sat apart from the crowd at the foot of the dsan

and received special attention from the pandit, who led them through the various

offerings that comprised the puja. This was the mukh-srotd (literally, "foremost

listeners"), the family that either sponsored the katha or volunteered that evening to

145A dhoti is a men's lower-body wrap, a kurtd is an Indian collarless shirt, and a rdm-ndm shawl is so

named because it is printed with Sanskrit mantras, such as "aum sri ram ay ram jay jay ram " In general,Indo-Fijian men will only don "Indian clothing" such as this if they are the featured speaker or guest at anIndo-Fijian event, or a member of the groom's party at a wedding, whereas normally men wear buttonedshirts and slacks, even in the context of religious events. In contrast, Indo-Fijian women are expected towear clothing imported from India, such as the sari and salvar-qamiz, the former of which is a virtualrequirement for married women at weddings and community religious events.

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carryout this duty. The family (or organization) that sponsors the katha is primarily

responsible for compensating the pracharak through a donation within their means and

may request particular episodes or discursive themes from the principal narrative or text.

Pandit Sharma's katha style involved a great deal of memorization and

extemporaneous discourse. Rather than reading and singing directly from the

Rdmcaritmanas he paraphrased the narrative's episodes, utilizing his small collection of

notebooks discretely concealed from view. This style emphasized his intimate familiarity

with the epic—thus bolstering his authority over its interpretatin—and allowed him to

Figure 15: Ram Katha. Pandit Sharma sings a bhajan refrain during Ram Katha. Sabeto, Fiji, 2005. Photoby K. Miller.

engage the audience more directly through eye contact and quasi-discussion. Although he

hardly glanced at it, a large copy of the Rdmcaritmdnas lay open on the dais, propped up

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on its stand, where it was worshipped as another murti, or representation of the divine.

Over the course of the three evenings, Pandit Sharma made his way through the

Ramayana narrative, punctuating his pravacan (exposition) with devotional singing.

Typical of formal Indo-Fijian gatherings, the pandit spoke exclusively in standard Hindi

(called suddh, or "pure" Hindi in Fiji) with a highly Sanskritized vocabulary.

Katha expounders, such as Pandit Sharma, employ a variety of discursive

techniques including analogy, metaphor, and allegory and strive to unearth the stratified

meanings embedded in the text. As one singer told me with typical (but perhaps

hyperbolic) reverence for the Rdmcaritmdnas: "One caupai [quatrain] from the Ramayan

has fifty to sixty meanings." According to Pandit Sharma, the Ramayana offers four

principal teachings from which countless lessons may be drawn: 1) Ram demonstrates

how a son should respect his parents and defer to their judgment; 2) Ram shows the

importance of humility, cautioning against self-praise (barai); 3) Ram and Sita, as the

divine couple, emphasize the sanctity of monogamy; and 4) those such as Ravan who

commit themselves to enmity (dusmani thdnna) sow the seeds of their own destruction

and endanger those around them through their actions.

Listeners also critique pracharaks on their command of textual and oral sources

that support the primary katha text, and expounders will often have a repertoire of

obscure textual references and lesser-known folktales. For example, Pandit Sharma

included a story in his Ram katha about Sita as a young girl that reveals her divine power

as an incarnation of Lakshmi, Vishnu's consort. Raja Janaka, Sita's father, had on display

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in his palace an immense bow gifted to him by Shiva that no mortal could lift. One day,

while cleaning, Sita casually lifts Shiva's bow with her left hand in order to dust behind

it. Witnessing this miraculous act, Raja Janaka decides that any suitor for Sita's hand in

marriage must pass the trial of lifting and stringing this bow, thus ensuring a husband

equal to and worthy of Sita's inherent power. Such depictions of Sita's physical strength,

absent in Tulsidas' Rdmcaritmdnas, provide a compelling complement to the more

common portrait of Sita as pativrata, the subservient feminine ideal.

Pandit Sharma's pracharak style suggests a mixture of influences, including skills

that he learned from his father or grandfather, but also techniques that he adapted from

famous Indian Ramayana expounders whose recordings are played on Fiji's Hindi radio

stations and are available in local music stores. The most influential figures, widely cited

by Indo-Fijian pracharaks, are Morari Bapu and Ramesh Bhai Oza, both of whom have

visited Fiji on katha tours. Pandit Sharma's style incorporated various songs from the

folk, devotional, and film repertoire, usually in an abridged form, that he selected based

on their narrative logic and emotional affect. For example, to punctuate his account of

Sita's departure from her natal household after marrying Ram, he launched into a popular

vivdh git (wedding song) that traditionally accompanies the departure of the bride. More

often he incorporated lines from semiclassical bhajans that had either originated in or

been popularized by Hindi films. To convey the profound grief of Raja Dashrath, Ram's

father, at the departure of Ram, Lakshman, and Sita into exile, Pandit Sharma sang a

146The story of Sita and Shiva's bow appears in various Hindu discourses, including a widely circulated

Ram Naumi address by Sathya Sai Baba. A South Indian version of the story has Sita playing with a ball,which rolls behind Shiva's giant bow, forcing her to lift it out of the way.

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refrain from the filmi bhajan"Sukh ke sab sdthi"141 The refrain, as he sang it, went as

follows:

Sukh ke sab sdthi dukh mem na koi... mere ram, mere ramTimes of joy attract many companions, times of grief, none ... my Ram,my Ram148

In the original bhajan, the line that follows this appeal to Ram states, tera nam ek saca

duja na kol ("your name is the only truth, no others"), but Pandit Sharma sang only the

first half, assuming, perhaps, that his audience knew the rest. Accompanied by the

mandali, the pandit delivered the refrain in its original melody, a lyrical slow-paced

inverted arch in a scale equivalent to natural minor, i.e. rag darbdri kanadd (see Musical

Example 2).149 He incorporated the refrain into his katha in the following way (this is an

excerpt translated into English):

Speaks: And Raja Dashrath said, "If you depart, I will surely die. Sita, when weleft your father, I promised him that if difficulties arose, I would give myown life before anything should happen to you." But the three prepared toleave. Then Sita addressed Raja Dashrath: "Oh father, please do not denyme this service to my husband, lest it should slip from my grasp."150

147

This is a famous bhajan performed by Mohammad Rafi for the film Gopi (1970). Other examples offilmi bhajans incorporated by Pandit Sharma during the Ram katha include"Ramchandra kah gaye" (alsofrom Gopi), "Om jay jagdish harf (from Purab aur Paschim), and "Ram ndm laddu Gopal ndm ghf (notfrom a film).148

Uncredited translations in this dissertation should be assumed to be mine.149

It is important to note, however, that most Indo-Fijian singers such as Pandit Sharma have no formaltraining in rag and tal theory and are unlikely to identify the rag they are singing. Furthermore, a singer'sexecution of a rag is limited to what he or she has learned by rote. See the discussion on classicization inchapter 7.

Interestingly, this dialogue resembles less the corresponding exchange in Tulsidas' Ramcaritmdnas andmore the corresponding episode of the famous Ramayan TV serial by Ramanand Sagar. Furthermore, asPurnima Mankekar points out, the Ramayan TV serial makes similar use of bhajans, employing them as

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Master Sailesh, so called because he makes his living as a school teacher, continues the

tradition in Fiji of the "Swatantra Pracharak," an "independent preacher" so renowned for

his knowledge and abilities that he is in demand beyond his geographical niche. He

resides in the rural settlement of Naviyago to the north of Lautoka but finds frequent

employment in the city as a pracharak. Like Pandit Sharma, he is of North Indian descent,

although the mandali that accompanies his katha performances is of mixed North and

South Indian membership. Non-Brahman pracharaks, denied the inherited knowledge of

Brahman pandits and the assistance of the S.S.D. Purohit Brahman Sabha, tend to seek

out a senior pracharak to serve as their guru. Master Sailesh's guru lives in Suva, on the

opposite side of Viti Levu. Of course, pracharaks also learn by listening to other

expounders, both in live performance and through the media. For example, Master

Sailesh told me:

Recently, for the last two or three years, I've been using some tunes thatwere sung by Ramesh Bhai Oza, who is from India. When he came to dothe program here, he had some very nice tunes.... He had the program forten days, in the daytime for six hours and the nighttime for six hours. Iattended those all-day programs. His programs also run on the radio onSundays, so we have been recording that also.... It was quite difficult forme to learn those tunes, and I don't think any mandali in Fiji at themoment is using those tunes because they're quite difficult.

Several other pracharaks expressed a similar inspiration from Oza's Fiji tour, whose

name is usually mentioned together with Bapu's. Although both men are Gujarati, their

Ram kathas are based on the Rdmcaritmdnas, and they offer pravacan in both Gujarati

and Hindi. Hinduism Today, a publication of the Hawaii-based Himalayan Academy,

named Oza "Hindu of the Year" in 2006 for his global impact on Sanatan Dharm. Both

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expounders travel widely in the South Asian diaspora, and their recordings travel even

further, creating a professional, semiclassical benchmark for local katha performance.

On a chilly evening in August, I attended the fourth night of a five-day Shiu katha

led by Master Sailesh at a private home north of Lautoka. The physical setting and

devotional framing of the katha performance followed the pattern described above for the

Ram katha with the notable exception of Master Sailesh's attire, which consisted of a

formal "guru shirt" and a pair of slacks rather than the dhoti, kurtd, and shawl typical of a

Brahman pandit. The mukh-srotd had requested a Shiu katha, as explained to me, to

attract "good fortune"—among married couples, Shiva is a popular recipient of

petitionary prayers, especially in his role as divine householder with wife Parvati and

sons Karttikeya and Ganesh.152 Although a Shiu katha, the primary text for the evening

was the Rdmcaritmdnas—since Tulsidas dedicates a large portion of his Bal kdnd to

stories about Shiva as a narrator of the epic and a devotee of Ram—which Master Sailesh

supplemented with the Shiva Purana towards the close of the katha. The primary

narrative of the evening followed the penance of Sati, who achieves her desire to wed

Shiva by sacrificing her life to be re-born as Parvati. Like Pandit Sharma, Master Sailesh

delivered a lively katha interspersed with the globally dispersed melodies of the

semiclassical bhajan repertoire, and he frequently digressed into side-stories and jokes to

keep the audience entertained and tuned in. Unlike the pandit, however, Master Sailesh

sang directly from a large copy of the Rdmcaritmdnas with certain pages clearly marked

152For example, the kohbar, a room where the bride and groom retire for certain rituals following the

wedding proper, contains a small puja area dominated by a poster or painting of Shiva and Parvati (notRam and Sita, as I might have expected). "Shiu" is a common variation on "Shiv" or "Shiva" in Fiji.

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with a highlighter pen. As he moved through the story, he selected particular caupdi and

dohd to sing while others he read in a stylized fashion during the course of his pravacan.

He alternated through four different melodies to sing the caupdi (technically, a half-

caupdl), each involving a repeat of the first half line (quarter-caupdl) creating an A-A-B

effect (as demonstrated below). After Master Sailesh sang a caupdi in this manner his

mandali joined in chorus, singing a popular bhajan refrain using the same melody as the

caupdi. While some of these derived from well-known Shiva bhajans, the most frequent

refrain repeated a famous caupdi from the Rdmcaritmdnas in which Shiva describes the

wonder of the child Ram: "Abode of auspiciousness, remover of inauspiciousness, may

He who plays in Dashrath's courtyard be merciful!"153 One of the caupdi melodies

employed by Master Sailesh is represented in Musical Example 3. In English translation,

his A-A-B rendering of the caupdi would be heard as follows:

(A) Ever adore the feet of Sahkara [Shiva]...(A) Ever adore the feet of Sahkara ...(B) This sums up the duty of a wife. Her husband is her deity;

there is no other god for her154

153 Lutgendorf notes that this caupdi is often inserted as a benediction (samput) by Ramayana reciters inNorth India following each completion of a dohd and its preceding stanza (1991: 70). It is also the openingline of the widely known Ram-bhakti bhajan "Ram Siya Ram" (see chapter 7 for more on this bhajan). ThisEnglish translation is by Lutgendorf (ibid.), and the original verse reads: mangala bhavan amangala hdri Idravahu so Dasaratha ajira vihari (prior to Dohd 112 of the Bal kdnd).154

Caupdi prior to Dohd 102 of the Bdl kdnd. English translation from the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas2001:110).

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hemisphere.155 For Sanatanis, Ram Naumi and Diwali are the most important festivals of

the year as both are associated with Ram-bhakti, but the Krishna-themed Holi festival

remains a significant and highly anticipated ritual occasion in the rural Indian

settlements. As discussed in chapter 4, the Holi (Holi) festival is generally called Phagua

in Fiji, after the lunar month of Phagun, which also lends its name to the associated

folksong repertoire, simply called "Faag" or "chautal." The Phagua period (February-

March) lasts for about forty days, but most singing occurs during the two weeks prior to

the full moon night of Phagun. The celebration peaks the following day as members of

the "village mandali" move from house to house, singing Faag and dousing each other

with colored water and powder in a spirit of fun and fellowship. Although the festival no

longer corresponds with the spring harvest season as it does in India, Phagua remains

closely linked to Fiji's agricultural communities, leaving some town and city dwellers

with the perception that the festival's popularity has faded.156 In this section, I

demonstrate the continued relevance of the Phagua festival to the lives of farmers in the

rural settlements of western Viti Levu, where "Faag mandalis" trace the boundaries of

community through their activities and hone a sense of amity through their raucous

singing.

Phagua, originally brought to Fiji by girmitiyas of North Indian stock, is a

Vaishnavite festival dominated by themes of felicity, social inversion, reconciliation,

During 2006, for example, the calendar noted religious observations on 116 days out of the year,although many of these are relevant only to orthodox pandits or followers of a particular deity.

I would contend that Kelly's assessment of the decline of Holi (and the corresponding rise of Diwali) asthe most significant Hindu holiday in Fiji demonstrates an urban bias. He conducted most of his fieldworkin the Suva-Nausori area (1988b).

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renewal, and the victory of good over evil. In Fiji, Sanatanis commonly explain the origin

and meaning of the festival through the story of Prahlad, the righteous son of the evil,

power-hungry Hiranyakashipu. Demanding that he be worshipped above all gods,

Hiranyakashipu became infuriated when his own son continued to steadfastly worship

Vishnu. As punishment, Hiranyakashipu placed Prahlad in the arms of his sister Holika,

who possessed a divine immunity to fire, and set both ablaze on a pyre. Through the

intervention of Vishnu, however, Prahlad emerged unharmed while Holika was burned to

ashes. Subsequently, Hiranyakashipu himself was slain by Vishnu during his Narasimha

incarnation, and the play of red-colored liquid and powder on Phagua is meant to

represent on a fundamental level the blood and ashes of Hiranyakashipu and Holika

respectively. Many Sanatanis in Fiji identify Prahlad specifically as a devotee of Ram,

reflecting the pervasiveness of Ram-bhakti and the inclination to equate Ram with

Vishnu or even Brahma, the nirguna godhead. Still, as in India, only a minority of

songs in the Faag repertoire is based on the Rdmcaritmdnas, while most describe the

playful acts and legends of Krishna, the story of Prahlad, or the pastoral splendor of the

Holi festival itself.158

As discussed in chapter 5, the concept of Ram as simultaneously saguna (incarnate with attributes) andnirguna (formless without attributes) derives from the Rdmcaritmdnas. Ram was also at the center of thePrahlad story as told to Henry during his fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh (1988: 122). Locating Ram at thedevotional center of the Holi festival challenges Kelly's hypothesis (one of several) that Diwali supplantedHoli as the most important Hindu holiday due to the former's emphasis on Ram and the latter's emphasison Krishna (1988b: 46).158

As they are both incarnations of Vishnu, Ram and Krishna coexist happily in Indo-Fijian bhaktipractices. For example, one group of devotees erected a large image of Hanuman (the symbol of Ram-bhakti) atop an earthen mound during celebrations for Krishna Janmashtami (Krishna's birthday).

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On the national level, Sanatanis tend to explain the message of Phagua in terms

that intersect with the discourse of benevolent multiculturalism that has dominated Fijian

politics throughout the independence period. For example, during the Phagua celebrations

in 2007, the evening news televised a brief interview with a mandali member in the midst

of the festivities. His skin and clothes were stained with red dye, and talcum powder

marked his face and hair. He said in English to the reporter, "Fiji is a multiracial country.

People of all races live here. And we play with all different colors that show that though

we are different races, when you mix all different colors, it becomes one color."159 Indo-

Fijian politicians reproduce commentaries such as this in the media every time the

Phagua season comes around, and the meaning of the festival has generally shifted from

one of social inversion or transcendence to one of renewing interpersonal and communal

relationships. The distinctive performance style of the Faag repertoire, as described

below, both reflects and routinely recreates these sentiments of cooperation,

interdependence, and communitas.

As the Phagua season approaches, some Ramayan mandalis take on a special

form called the "Faag mandali," which may differ in membership from the group that sits

weekly to sing the Rdmcaritmdnas. The Faag mandali, like the Ramayan mandali, draws

together men (and only men), usually from the same settlement, ward, or neighborhood,

who express an interest in the Faag repertoire. The aesthetic criteria of this repertoire

demand a subtle shift in the ensemble's instrumentation: most members will play sets of

jhdnjh rather than other idiophones, such as the tambourine, and the normally ubiquitous

159Broadcast by Fiji One National News on March 3,2007.

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dahda tal will be replaced by the jhika (a long sistrum) or an oversized set of kartal. The

mandali sits in a tight circle around the dholakiyd and the jhika player—the physical

closeness of the group functions to cultivate a sense of solidarity and fraternity. The

dholakiyd plays a single dholak placed on the ground before him (rather than the two-

dholak style used for most other genres), and the jhika player sits directly opposite,

literally holding the dholak in place with his feet during the most rhythmically intense

moments of the song (see Figure 16).160 The jhika player further adds a dramatic visual

dimension to the mandali by holding the jhika at both ends (a span of about three

feet/ninety centimeters) over his head as he shakes the instrument with vigor. The

harmonium player will usually sit adjacent to the dholak- jhika pair, forming a point of

reference whereby the circle is divided into two halves, each one "side" of an antiphonal

chorus. According to mandali members, the metallic jangle of the jhika, which appears

only during Phagua, is essential to the definitive timbre of the Faag repertoire, and the

instrument further serves to "bind" the ensemble together.

As mentioned above, the Faag repertoire is generally called "chautal" as a group,

but chautal can also refer to a specific subgenre within the group. There are numerous

subgenres of the Faag repertoire, all of which are local variants of North Indian folksong

antecedents. These subgenres fall into two categories: long-format styles, such as chautal,

This formation differs from Brenneis' description of Holi singing in rural Vanua Levu during the early1970s. Rather than a circle, Brenneis describes a rectangular group formation formed by two antiphonalchorus lines with the dholak andjhika players positioned at opposite ends (1985:402).

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jhumar, baishwara, and jati, and short-format styles, such as hori, kabira, jogira, and sada

anand.161 Although each is distinguishable, most long-format subgenres conform to a

Figure 16: Faag Mandali. Pandit Sharma's mandali sings for Holi. Note the musician with large kartalsitting opposite the dholak. Sabeto, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

general Faag performance style characterized by numerous repetitions of each line of text

in stock melodies; a melodic range usually no greater than a fifth; a cyclical increase in

tempo, loudness, and intensity; and a antiphonal texture involving all members of the

group. A typical performance begins with a soloist singing the opening line of verse,

accompanied by the harmonium, which is then sung back to him by the opposite "side" of

the circle. With the third repetition of the line, voiced by the soloist's side, the dholak and

the rest of the instruments join in, usually in a quadratic meter with a distinctive quarter

161 Mayer, who witnessed Phagua in Fiji during the early 1950s, notes that in addition to "chautal," the mensang "similar songs" called "Phag" and "Jhumar" (1952: 5).

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162

note-double eighth note pattern played by the jhanjh (see Musical Example 5 below).

The verse is tossed back and forth in this manner for anywhere from twelve to twenty

repetitions, with a perceptible increase in tempo, rhythmic density, and dynamics each

time the verse returns to the soloist's side. As the repetitions pass by, the dholakiyd

pushes his skills to the limit, playing a triplet pattern over the pulse before shifting to a

rapid flat four, first in double time and then in triple time, while the jhika player reaches

maximum speed in a hail of sixteenth notes. After this percussive flourish, the ensemble

moves in a rapid duple meter towards the climax, although the sense of acceleration is

more the result of rhythmic density than actual accelerando. The jhdnjh become a blur

and all of the musicians, particularly the jhika player, become more animated with the

rising intensity. Finally, with a cadencial signal from the dholakiyd, the ensemble

abruptly returns to the original slower tempo for two final repetitions of the verse, after

which the musicians silence their instruments. The soloist then sings the second line of

the text and the cycle repeats.

As Donald Brenneis observes, the energetic, participatory performance style of

Faag (or chautal) in Fiji correlates to a local psychological-aesthetic concept of

tamashabhaw that underlies the spirit of the festival and can be loosely translated as

"fun," although it has no exact counterpart in English:

162 The dominance of the quadratic meter (however elaborate) in the Indo-Fijian Holi repertoire contrastsmarkedly with the prevalence of a seven-beat meter in the Holi repertoire of the Caribbean (see, forexample, Myers 1998: 75). Many of the Holi subgenres in Fiji have counterparts in the Caribbean, such ascautdl (chowtal),jhumar, ulara, kabir, jogira, and hori.

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Cautal singing and the Holi festival when it occurs are characterized bytamashabhaw, a situation of playfulness or fun, the associated experienceand those elements which catalyze it. The conventional features oftamashabhaw—those which engender its experience—include fastinteractional tempo, a participatory structure in which a number of peoplecan take part and a system of turn allocation among performers allowingfor overlap. These features also define cautal as a song style. When suchelements are present in an event, it can be "read" as playful; the stage isset for the experience of social pleasure. (1985: 405-06)

Indeed, a feeling of felicitous excitement drives the Faag performance, moving at a tilting

gallop through the iteration of each verse, threatening to lose control yet never breaking

from the structural bonds of Faag song form.

In general, my field consultants associated the practice of Faag singing with their

girmitiya heritage, emphasizing the depth of the tradition, its unbroken link with the past,

and its intimate connection to the life of agriculture built by their forefathers. This sense

of tradition, together with the structural requirements of Faag performance style, may

explain why the repertoire for Phagua remains relatively untouched by the widespread

trend in Fiji of incorporating Hindi film and semiclassical melodies into the local

folksong and devotional repertoire.163 The Faag repertoire, after all, can only be

performed during a forty-day period once a year, so the appeal of a traditional repertoire

and performance style, inseparable from the spirit of the festival and soaked in memory,

tends to trump any inclination toward innovation.164 Nevertheless, many singers compose

This absence is all the more notable since the Holi festival is a stock scene in many Hindi films. Theuse of film melodies during Phagua may occur in brief auxiliary genres, such as hori (hori), attached to theend of the main chautal or jhumar. As explained to me, this is done "just for fun."164

The exception, again, is a handful of sub-genres associated with Krishna such as hori and rasiya(rasiya) that may be performed during Krishna Janmashtami (in August) but not in the typical Faagperformance style.

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their own song texts, which are shared with other singers and sometimes published in the

local Hindi press. Most singers base their compositions closely on cautal jhumar,

baisvdrd, and other Holi texts imported from India and select their topics from the Hindu

epics or current events. Mayer provides the text of two chautals composed by an Indo-

Fijian over half a century ago. One describes the Phagua festivities and the other

celebrates Gandhi's victory in the newly independent India (Mayer 1952: 6). In recent

years, topical Faag songs have addressed subjects ranging from the coups to the national

rugby team (which should not be underestimated as a force for national unity in rugby-

obsessed Fiji).

My first examples from the Faag repertoire are drawn from organized, seasonal

singing contests that involve seven to ten Faag mandalis from a particular region.165

Although these events may be advertised in English as a "Grand Faag Competition,"

participants generally describe the evening in Hindi as a sammelan, a "gathering" or

"coming together." The distinction is significant since many Sanatanis consider the

element of competition to be contrary to the spirit of Faag singing, which, ideally,

emphasizes fellowship, forgiveness, and the renewal of old friendships. Still, the

mandalis are judged by a panel of experts (music teachers or seasoned singers), ranked

according to ability, and awarded trophies. The organizers and judges take care not to

rouse animosity among the mandalis, and most participants accept the evaluation of the

165 I attended two Faag Competitions during the 2006 Phagua season. The first, on the evening of February25, was hosted by the Andhra Volunteer Group and held at the Andhra Sangam School in the city ofLautoka. The second, on the evening of March 4, was hosted by the Lomolomo Premi Ramayan FaagMandali and held at the Sita Ram Mandir in Lomolomo, a settlement near Sabeto (about ten kilometerssouth of Lautoka). These competitive gatherings tend to occur on weekends during the forty days leadingup to the main celebration of Phagua, which is generally reserved for house-to-house visiting.

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judges as important to the maintenance of Faag singing as an art form with certain

aesthetic standards.166 The evaluation criteria place a premium on group cohesion in

performance, including svar (intonation of the voice), tal (rhythm), gati (speed), sabd

(text), sabd uc-cdran (chorus), and sdz (instrumentation). In a randomly determined

order, each Faag mandali takes the stage (or designated performance space) and performs

one song, which usually lasts fifteen to twenty minutes. The top-ranked mandalis will be

brought back for a second performance, so the audience hears about a dozen Faag songs

over the course of the evening, which typically lasts about five hours.

As with any Sanatani event, the organizers and participants frame Faag

competitions as devotional events through a number of devices, including an opening

Sanskrit prayer by a Brahman pandit, the absence of footwear on the stage, and the

simple gesture—made by most mandali members—of reaching down to respectfully

touch the floor of the performance space with the right hand while ascending the stage.

Additionally, the first Faag song of the evening is always an invocatory type called

sumarni, a local variation on sumiran, which derives from smaran, meaning to

"remember" or "call to mind" a deity. In the context of Phagua, the sumarni may take the

form of any long-format Faag subgenre, such as chautal or jhumar, and may be directed

toward any deity or deities. Like all long-format subgenres, the sumarni concludes with

an "ulara" (uldra) section, actually a short-format subgenre meant to summarize or

extend the narrative of the longer song to which it is attached. As one mandali member

Organizers will usually make an effort to have some kind of trophy or award for each mandali thatparticipates. In addition to the coveted "First Place Mandali" and "First Place Dholakia," there may beother, more imaginatively conceived awards, such as "Youngest Mandali" and "Most Punctual Mandali."

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explained to me, "The chautal is like lunch and the ulara is the chutney—without it it's

bland."167

The sumarni that opened the Faag competition in Lomolomo was dedicated to

Hanuman, possibly because the event took place at a Ram temple. The structure follows a

repeating A-B song form, meaning that the first line of text uses a stock melodic-

rhythmic combination that is also used for the third line, fifth line, etc., while a distinctive

stock melodic-rhythmic combination is used for the second line, and repeated for the

fourth line, sixth line, etc. Each line of text is repeated a certain number of times,

although the mandali varied in its consistency: text using line-form A received twenty to

twenty-two iterations, while text using line-form B received fourteen to sixteen. In all,

there were nine lines of text in addition to the ulara. The melodies employed for line-

forms A and B, and for the ulara, are illustrated in Musical Example 4 (see also the full

text translation). Composed by the singer, who inserts his name into the final lines of the

song (a tradition known as chap, meaning "imprint" or "mark"), the text of the sumarni

describes the deeds of Hanuman in a manner similar to the Hanuman Cdlisa performed

by Pandit Sharma above.

The most prominent long-format subgenres of the Faag repertoire (chautal,

jhumar, baishwara, and jati) differ in terms of textual form, stock melodies, and song

form, particularly regarding the number and manner of textual repetition. Subgenre style

also varies regionally within Fiji. I was told, for instance, that chautal (as a subgenre) was

Chutney is a spicy condiment used with Indian food. "Chautal" is used here to refer to any long-formatFaag subgenre.

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absence of the chautal subgenre in Lautoka and Sabeto but a proliferation of jhumar and

other long-format styles.

Both chautal and jhumar use a repeating A-B-C song form with an attached ulara.

"Chautal" (cautdl), literally meaning "four beats," is most likely the subgenre described

by Brenneis in his 1985 article based on his research in rural Vanua Levu—none of the

Faag styles I heard during my research utilized the choral overlapping of the terminal

syllable that he describes for chautal (1985: 402). "Jhumar" (jhumar), based on the root

word jhum ("swaying"), derives from a women's folksong genre of northern India

associated with a ring dance of the same name. The jhumar illustrated in Musical

Example 5 is based on a performance by the Galitu Ramayan Faag Mandali, which took

the first place trophy at both competitions I attended. The transcription represents the first

three lines of the humar's text, demonstrating the stock melodies employed for line-

forms A, B, and C, which thereafter repeat with new text. The success of this mandali

owed to a combination of factors: the singer was a well-known composer of Faag songs,

the dholakiyd was exceptionally talented, and a mandolin player added novelty, but above

all the performance was tight and executed with precision. The number of iterations by

the chorus of each line of text was consistent: twenty for line-form A, eight for line-form

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The issue of regionalism became apparent as I watched a Faag rehearsal by a student mandali at ateachers training college in Lautoka. The young men in the mandali had come from various towns andsettlements all over Fiji, both Vanua Levu and Viti Levu. They initially found it difficult to sing together asa Faag mandali because each member was used to his particular regional style. This was the only occasionon which I heard the chautal subgenre style.

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katha described above. From the first day of the Phagua season (basant pancami, or the

"fifth day" of "spring"), the mandali put aside its usual repertoire of bhajans and kirtans

and brought out its repertoire of Faag. During the weekly or bi-weekly meetings, it

became clear that the members of Pandit Sharma's mandali felt themselves to be

representatives of their "village" (Keolaiya), and that their mastery and skillful

performance of the Faag repertoire reflected directly on the merit of their community. For

example, following a sammelan (meeting) with another Faag mandali, I overheard the

pandit observe proudly that his own mandali's collection of Krishna-themed Faag songs

easily exceeded that of the "rival" mandali. He added, "Friends, is not the honor of the

village my honor?" To which his fellow members responded, "Yes, you speak the

truth." When the night of the full moon arrived (called "Purnamassi" or purnima

Hollkd ddh, the "full moon night of Holika burning"), the mandali gathered in a bure

(thatched hut) where the members sang Faag, drank kava, and discussed the "rules" for

celebrating Holi the following day. It was agreed that the mandali members would

graciously subject themselves to the colored liquid or powder offered by the host of each

house, but that none should engage in excessive "water play," which tends to damage

property and leave participants wet and itchy all day. This latter activity, it was felt,

might agitate certain members or households and thus threaten the "unity" (bandhan) of

the mandali. At 10:20 PM, the auspicious time designated by the Sanatan Dharm

calendar, Pandit Sharma and a few male members of the household walked to the edge of

the compound where an abstract effigy of the demoness Holika made of palm fronds

He said this in Hindi: "Gaon ki izzat meri izzat, hai na yar?" They responded, "Sac bat bold."

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stood. After a brief p j a , one of the members lit the effigy as another pulled a green

sapling out of the pyre, symbolizing Prahlad's rescue from the flames. As the pyre

burned, the members briskly circumnavigated the flames three times singing "Holi hai!"

As the fire raged, I left with the pandit to visit two more homesteads, where he repeated

the ritual.

The following morning, the mandali returned to the spot where the Holika effigy

had burned to ashes. While intoning some words in Sanskrit, Pandit Sharma mixed red

colored water with the ashes and applied the resulting mixture to each member's forehead

as a tilak. The pandit also placed a tilak on the dholak and the jhanjh (a sanctifying

gesture), before the mandali stood in a circle around the dholakiyd and sang the first song

of the day's celebration: a short composition called "kabira." In Fiji, the kabira (kabira) is

a bhakti genre in a simple call and response format that singers often attach to the end of

longer Faag songs, such as chautal, jhumar, and baishwara. This performance,

however, stood alone and described the miraculous faith of Prahlad, setting the tone for

the day's activities. From here, the mandali climbed onto a flatbed hitch, which Pandit

Sharma towed with a tractor, and traveled from house to house. About a dozen members

traveled on the tractor while other members remained at their homes to receive the group.

The sequence of a typical house visit went as follows. Upon arrival, the head of

the household greeted the mandali members and ushered them into the cool shade of the

As described by Henry, the kabir in the Bhojpuri area of northern India is a Holi genre consisting oflewd rhyming verses, and the connection to the medieval poet Kabir is unclear (1988: 125). However, inFiji, several of my field consultants attributed the verses of their "kabira" to Kabir himself, and the traditionof humorous rhyming verse has been relegated to a related genre called "jogira" (see below).

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compound's bure. The women and children of the homestead generally stayed in the

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house or in the yard, where they occasionally played with colored water or powder. In

the bure, the mandali performed one or two Faag songs (beginning with a sumarni in the

first location), ate special fried snacks associated with the season, drank kava, smoked

cigarettes, and generally relaxed. At a few locations, the householder walked around the

seated mandali members as they sang and rubbed colored talcum powder on their faces.

After a while, the mandali left the bure and performed a brief farewell song while

standing in the yard. Called "sada anand" (sadanand), meaning "everlasting happiness,"

this song incorporates the householder's name and thanks him for his blessings and

hospitality. During the sada anand, the householder walked around the mandali members

with a chilled bowl of purple or red colored water and gently and systematically poured a

saucer-full down the back of each member's neck (see Figure 17). Before leaving for the

next compound, the mandali collected a small donation (candd) of two Fiji dollars and

the pandit received a modest sidha dan for his services. At one location, where a death

had occurred within the year, the mandali simply sat and prayed in silence; there was no

singing or color play.

In addition to the jhumar subgenre described above, Pandit Sharma's mandali

performed a range of Faag subgenres during the course of their house-to-house visits.

These included long-format styles, such as baishwara and jati, and short-format styles,

172Although Diwali is the only national Hindu holiday, the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha has secured permission

from the Ministry of Education to close its schools on Phagua day. Women tend to play with colored waterand powder among themselves (but not generally with men), so my exposure to the Phagua festivities wasrestricted to the activities of the male Faag mandali.

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Figure 17: Holi color-play. A mandali member is doused with chilled, red-colored liquid on Phagua.Sabeto, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

such as hori, jogira, and the kabira mentioned above. In most cases, the singers relied on

chapbooks of lyrics, either hand-written or clipped from the Hindi newspaper. Baishwara,

derived from the North Indian folksong genre baisvdrd, has associations with agriculture,

while jati (jati) apparently takes its name from the Braj Bhasha adaptation of yati,

meaning "ascetic." In terms of performance style, baishwara and jati are

interchangeable—both have a repeating A-B song form with an attached ulara, and both

use the same stock melodies.

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During a house visit, I heard an elder member of the mandali perform a jati based

on a popular episode from the Rdmcaritmanas. The mandali performed each line of text

in line-form A with either twelve or fourteen iterations and each line of text in line-form

B with a consistent eight iterations. The stock melody of line-form B in baishwara and

jati includes a distinctive leap to the perfect fourth, which most singers emphasize for

dramatic effect. The text of this jati describes an encounter between Ram and the elderly

female ascetic, Shabari, in which he imparts the nine disciplines of bhakti (navadhd

bhakti) to her. As discussed in chapter 7, the story of Shabari's devotion to Ram is a

popular theme in religious discourse and performance among Sanatanis in Fiji. See full

text and translation in Figure 18.

The mischievous fun or tamasa of the Phagua festival finds its greatest musical

expression in the short-format subgenre called jogira (jogird), which consists of

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humorous—even lewd—verses in rhyming couplets. A singer typically attaches a

jogira to the end of a long-format subgenre, such as jhumar-ulara, announcing his

intention by singing the standard jogira refrain: "Jogira sa-ra-ra-ra-ra, jogira sa-ra-ra-ra-

ra!" Most jogira couplets are improvised, but based on certain formulae, such as ek

acambhd ham-ne dekha ... ("I saw an astonishing sight..."). In the jogira exchange

reproduced below, Pandit Sharma (Singer A) introduces a thematic thread on the colonial

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Henry's description of jogird in Uttar Pradesh (where it is also a Holi genre) is very similar to what Iobserved in Fiji. He also hypothesizes that the name jogird derives from "jogi" meaning "ascetic," andthat, together with the kabir, their "names and their humorous whimsy suggest that they are in some wayrelated to the ultabasi songs of the Jogis " (Henry 1988: 125).

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Mai bhala sabarimahdtdrii prabhu rah nirahdri va are haRighteous Shabari, the great deliverer, gazes expectantly down the path for her Lord

Matanga rishi kahayo samujhai ho prabhu darsan ko ho aiThe sage Matanga had foretold that she would see the Lord and receive his blessing

Nitya nae bair l sabarl dvai, suman se marg sajavai prabhu pag kast nd ave..refrainEvery day Shabari adorns the path with petals so that the Lord's feet shall be comfortable.. refrain

Kam bandh mar prabhu dsram dyo ho nainani pyasaWith the Lord's arrival, the thirst of her eyes was quenched

Sabarl kahayo adham main nari mohi na bhakti suhai, Prabhu kahayo nahi nahi bhai...refrainShabari spoke: how can I an inferior woman lacking in charms receive your grace?The Lord Replied: no, you are dear to me..refrain

Mdnau ek bhakti kar ndtd hoprem vivas apandl(said the Lord) I recognize no kinship apart from devotion, take this to heart with affection

nau dhd bhakti hohi virdjeprabhu kahayo suskai saphal jivan tero bhdl...refrainThe nine-fold path of bhakti, said the Lord, seated and smiling, shall fulfill your life, dear friend

Pratham bhakti santan kar sagdn di dusar prem bataiThe first path of bhakti is communion with the saints, the second is love (for my stories)

Tlsara bhakti guru ki seva, cautho guna apandl, Panc visvds kahaldi. refrainThe third path to bhakti is to serve your guru and the fourth is to make a habit of meritorious praiseThe fifth is a reliance on my Name.. refrain

Sath dam sil satsahg nirantar ho asatham santosd kahaiThe sixth is self-control in the manner of the saints, the eighth is to be content and show patience

Navam saral saba mana chal hond, sukha-dukha saris, Batdyl leyo ekau apandi.. refrainThe ninth is straight-forwardness with all and devotion to me in the heart and mind, neither in grief, norjoy. Take these words to live by

Figure 18: Jati text. Composed by Sanjam Kumar of Tamabua, Fiji. The refrain is underlined.

era sport of horse racing, and a member of the mandali (Singer B) carries it forward in the

next couplet (see Musical Example 6).

Singer A: ek acambha ham-ne dekha girmit mem jab aye (repeats once)tin gor ke ghord dekhd hors-res mem jayejogird sa ra ra ra ra, jogird sa ra ra ra ra (chorus repeats refrain)

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When I came during the days of indenture, I saw an astonishing sight.I saw a three-legged horse enter a horse race!Jogira sa ra ra ra ra, jogira sa ra ra ra ra

Singer B: ek acambha ham-ne dekha hors-res mem jaye (repeats once)ek gor ke memiyd dekhd swimln pul mem jayejogira sa ra ra ra ra, jogira sa ra ra ra ra (chorus repeats refrain)

During the horse race, I saw an astonishing sight.I saw a one-legged white woman enter a swimming pool!Jogira sa ra ra ra ra, jogira sa ra ra ra ra

And so it continued. In a second example of jogira, performed by a young man from a

Lautoka-based mandali earlier in the Phagua season, the sexually suggestive character of

the couplet plays on the romantic associations of the monsoon season. The "punch-line"

elicited howls of laughter from his fellow mandali members.

rim-jhim rim-jhim pani bar se angan mem jam kai (repeats once)rat ke burhiya jag ke bole buddhd nahim kar pai...jogira sa ra ra ra hoi, jogira sa ra ra ra hoi (chorus repeats refrain)

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, the rain falls in the courtyard teaming with moss.In the night, the old woman awakens, saying: this old man can't get it up!Jogira sa ra ra ra hoi, jogira sa ra ra ra hoi

The Phagua season came to a close nearly two weeks later on the second Tuesday

to pass after the celebrations. Although it is not listed on the Sanatan Dharm calendar,

Indo-Fijian Sanatanis call this concluding day buddha mahgar, or "old Tuesday," and it

marks the end of Faag singing. On this day, the season ends with a modest ritual: the

mandali prays to Sarasvati, and loosens the remaining tuning lace on the dholak, which

had been left in its taut position since basant pancami, the first day of Phagua. By the

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appear to challenge the temperate character of Phagua celebrations; I would argue,

however, that the generic structuring and formulaic parameters of Faag singing—reliable

and predictable as demonstrated above—create a well-ordered sense of abandon that

parallels the festival's closely regulated color-play and patterns of interpersonal behavior.

Despite the genuine joy (tamashabhaw) generated and experienced through singing the

Faag repertoire, the singers are subject to the constraints of the genre and are judged

(sometimes literally) on their ability to perform en concert within these parameters, not

outside of them.

The element of social license and inversion that does persist in Phagua

celebrations—however diminished—serves as a catalyst for interpersonal

reconciliation.174 Indeed, in the Phagua of contemporary Fiji the symbolic destruction of

evil (represented by Holika), the glorification of bhakti (represented by Prahlad, Krishna,

and in some cases, Ram), and the playful enactment of tamashabhaw (represented by

Krishna in his youth), all contribute to one overarching theme: the forgiveness of past

disputes and the renewal of communal relationships. In the male domain of the Faag

mandali, the boundaries of community follow the trajectory of the procession from house

to house, where participatory singing hones a deep sense of fraternity. Stained with the

red dye of Holi, a unifying mark, the mandali members sing the Faag repertoire,

174I observed very few overt examples of behavior suggesting social inversion, although one example

occurred when mandali members playfully threw pieces of dried mud at Pandit Sharma as he drove thetractor on Phagua day. Another member described Phagua as a period during which prescribed rules ofaffinial relations (especially between seniors and juniors and males and females) were relaxed, and hesummed this up with a local expression: Phdgunpar bdbd dewar lage, meaning "During Phagua, a father-in-law becomes a younger brother-in-law." In other words, the figure normally given the greatest respect(the father-in-law) can be treated as a dewar, the younger brother-in-law, with whom one usually enjoys a"joking relationship."

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generating, in the words of Brenneis, "an emotional experience at the same time shared

and individual" (1985: 406).

The joy of the festival is actually bittersweet, as singers recall their friends and

relatives who sang Faag with them last year but have since moved to the city, emigrated,

or passed away. "My father was a very good singer, especially for chautal," a singer

named Naren told me. "It's thirty years ago that my father passed away, so during this

Holi time, it really makes me emotional. Sometime I cry, but I don't show that to others.

Thirty years ago, he was singing chautals, but today he is no longer here." I asked him if

the nostalgic force of Phagua was somehow different from other annual festivals, and he

replied, "Yes, to celebrate Holi we form a team. For the Ramayan mandali we also form a

team and celebrate Ram Naumi, but it's not as emotional. The reason is the music and all

of the happiness—it's a jovial thing. Holi is the most emotional festival."

While the building of community through emotional ties dates to the days of

jahaji bhai (ship-mates), we must ask what particular "community" is built through the

emotional bonds of the Faag mandali and the negotiated route it follows through the rural

landscape. As Mayer observed, the house-to-house procession of the mandali highlights

the internal divisions of the Indian settlement even as it functions to unify a Sanatani

community (1952: 15-16). For example, the mandali in Sabeto visited a total often

homesteads, all of which belonged to Sanatani Indo-Fijians of North Indian descent. Thus

the particular "village" community reinforced by the travels, performances, and

sentiments of the pandit's Faag mandali represented the Keolaiya ward as North Indian,

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excluding not only indigenous Fijians, but Indo-Fijian Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians,

and in this case, Indo-Fijian Hindus of South Indian descent.175

Conclusion

This chapter has examined Hindu (Sanatani) ritual and performance practices in

the rural areas of western Viti Levu, Fiji, through an ethnographic focus on the Indian

settlement of Sabeto. Although there is essentially no difference between the types of

music and ritual performed in urban and rural locales, the significance lies in the differing

performance contexts, and the fact that some performance traditions have particular,

sometimes romantic, associations with rural life. I suggest that it is through participation

in ritual performance that rural dwelling Sanatanis imaginatively transform the disparate,

non-nucleated geographic arrangement of the Indian settlement into an identifiable

community, a "village." This sense of community—an articulation of belonging to a

place and among a people—expands and contracts across various quasi-divisions of

physical space within the settlement: 1) the homestead, the basic unit: the abode of one's

immediate family, and the land that, although leased, may have been cultivated over

generations; 2) the house-group: a scattering of houses belonging to a founding family,

each a homestead in its own right; 3) the socio-religious cluster: a particular expanse of a

settlement may be dominated by "North Indians," "South Indians," or Muslims, often

formed from house-groups; 4) the ward: a loosely official subdivision of a settlement,

Pandit Sharma claimed that no South Indian families lived in his part of Keolaiya. In other areas, SouthIndians do join Faag mandalis, but if their numbers are great enough they may form their own mandali (seechapter 7).

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such as Keolaiya; and 5) the settlement itself, such as Sabeto, the "borders" of which may

be negotiable.

I have analyzed and interpreted several music-based performance practices,

including those led by an individual (the pandit or pracharak)—rot-pujd and katha—and

those performed by a group (the Faag mandali)—the Phagua song repertoire, in the

context of both the singing competition and the house-to-house procession. The reach of

Pandit Sharma's musical activities is one measure of community: his rot-pujd clientele

expands beyond his home ward of Keolaiya, and his popularity as a katha pracharak

occasionally takes him to neighboring settlements or even nearby towns. Through his

"performance," homesteads are sonically cleansed and protected, the petitions of the

faithful receive an audience with god, and the life-lessons of sacred texts are interpreted

and explained. As a religious leader, the pandit serves as a focal point for connecting a

large face-to-face community based on the shared heritage of Sanatan Dham. The Faag

mandali, on the other hand, draws members from a particular subsection of the settlement

(depending partly on the size of the settlement), based on connections of family, labor, or

proximity. In the case of Pandit Sharma's mandali, the members represented a "village"

of house-groups in Keolaiya originating from five North Indian Sanatani families. When

they meet other mandalis in competition, they sing for the "honor" of their village.

The competitions, in turn, draw mandalis from a particular region and serve to

cultivate a sense of a larger Sanatani community. The actual performance style of the

Faag repertoire, with its fast repetitions and raucous but tightly organized singing,

contributes to the sense of "controlled abandon" that permeates the Phagua festival. The

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close cooperation and cohesion of the mandali's musicianship correlates to the dominant

themes of the annual rite: fellowship, interdependence, and the renewal of communal

relationships. And yet the community that is reinforced through these performances, at

least in the area of my fieldwork, claims a clear Sanatani Hindu and largely "North

Indian" cultural identity. Finally, while the Faag repertoire places a premium on a "local"

and "traditional" performance style, the performance of katha (like most other Indo-Fijian

genres) thrives on incorporating well-known bhakti bhajans, melodies, and techniques

used by professional, India-based text expounders. Through this adoption, the pracharak

lends authority to the didacticism of his religious discourse and connects his audience to a

concept of community still broader: a global Hindu identity.

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Chapter 7. Lautoka, the Urban Center of the West

During one of my visits to Pandit Ranjeet Sharma in the rural Indian settlement of

Sabeto, we were driving to a religious gathering on a particularly dark, moonless night.

As the headlights lit the narrow dirt road ahead, the pandit pointed off to our right, an

area of darkness dimly framed by the outline of a mountain against the star-filled sky.

Three families, he said, used to live on this hillside but were forced to vacate their homes

when their land leases were not renewed. Previously, the lights of their homes formed a

part of this nighttime landscape; now these houses were vacant, invisible. The families

had likely moved to a city or town, or one of the growing, peri-urban squatter settlements,

or if they were more fortunate, immigrated overseas. Following chapter 6, which

examined Indo-Fijian Sanatani music and culture in the rural context, this chapter follows

these traditions to the city, where many of the same practices persist in a new

demographic context.

The research questions that drive this chapter are twofold: First, I continue to

query the relationship between musical performance, concepts of subethnicity, and

community building, particularly as it regards the musical lives of "South Indians" and

Muslims vis-a-vis the "North Indian" Sanatani Hindu majority. Second, I analyze and

interpret these urban musical practices vis-a-vis a local discourse that situates religious

authority and efficaciousness along a scale of Sanskritization (or classicization) with

"local folk music" at one end and "classical" music at the other. At the heart of this

discourse is a fundamental argument pitting "entertainment" (the secular) against

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"religion" (the sacred) in a battle over aesthetics, functionality, and meaning in musical

performance, a potent mixture I call "viable authenticity."

There are three major variables in the discourse over viable authenticity in Indo-

Fijian musical performance, each of which claims a subcontinental origin but seeks its

meaning in the local context. These are 1) "local" folk-based performance styles that

follow a "tradition" associated with and authenticated by the (rural) Indo-Fijian past; 2)

"Bollywood," or the Hindi film industry, whose tunes, rhythms, texts, and aesthetics have

greatly impacted Indo-Fijian "local folk music;" and 3) Indian "classical" or

"semiclassical" art and devotional music, which quietly rose to prominence during Fiji's

independence period, providing a benchmark of "high" Indian (Hindu) culture. The first

category includes a constellation of musical genres, techniques, instruments, contexts,

and transmission traditions that are deemed "local" in the sense that they are perceived to

carry forward the practices of one's Indo-Fijian predecessors, particularly the girmitiyas.

Examples include the "Faag" or "chautal" repertoire described in the previous chapter,

the use of the danda (stick idiophone), and the practice of learning musical skills by

rote through participation in a Ramayan mandali. The authenticity of these local practices

derives, in part, from their connection to (nineteenth-century) India, with the important

corollary that they have been filtered, honed, and made locally meaningful through the

experience of indenture.

The second category encompasses the transnational force of the Bollywood film

industry, which offers viewer-listeners a fantastic yet fully modern vision of India, often

complicit with political agendas of Hindu nationalism. The Hindi film first landed in Fiji

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during its nascent silent period, followed quickly by early "Bombay Talkies," such as

Ayodhya Ka Raja (1932). By 1933, there were seven cinema houses in Fiji, and portable

projectors soon brought the Hindi film to rural areas. The religious "mythological" film

was particularly popular, especially those based on the Ramayana such as Ram Rajya

(1943), Rambaan (1948), and Sampoorna Ramayana (1961) (Mishra 2002: xi).176 Today,

Hindi films and their musical soundtracks remain exceptionally popular, buttressed by

local Hindi radio, imported DVDs and VCDs, and a history of visiting performers,

including Mohammad Rafi, Manna Dey, and Lata Mangeshkar. The influence of Hindi

film music on local performance styles takes various forms, including quotation—such as

Pandit Sharma's incorporation of filmi bhajans into his Ram katha (see chapter 6)—and

parody, or tune borrowing, which is common in the Ramayan recitation, tambura bhajan,

and qawali genres discussed below.

Finally, the third category represents the domain of Indian art music based on rag

and tal theory, including North Indian (Hindustani) classical music and a semiclassical

repertoire of bhajans and ghazals. Prior to Fiji's independence period, exposure to Indian

classical music was minimal, but in 1972 the first Fiji Indian Culture Centre opened in

Suva through a joint effort of the governments of Fiji and India. Today there are five

locations around Fiji that employ a mixture of visiting instructors from India and foreign-

trained locals to teach Hindustani vocal, sitar, sarod, and tabla plus classical dances such

as kathak and bharata ndtyam. Like Hindi film music, Indian classical music presents

Adrian C. Mayer also observed that of "religious," "historical," and "social" Hindi films, the religioustype drew the largest audience in mid-century Fiji (1961: 191).

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listeners and performers with a direct connection to "Indian culture" that bypasses the

indenture experience and, in the case of filmi or semiclassical devotional music, allows

Indo-Fijian Sanatanis to tap into the soundtrack of a growing, globalized Hinduism.

It is particularly in the city that the interplay of musical performance,

subethnicity, and community maintenance intersects with the discourse over music and

viable authenticity, so I begin this chapter with a brief description of Lautoka, the

"second city" of Fiji in western Viti Levu where I conducted most of my field research.177

This section describes the settlement history and demographics of Lautoka but also

addresses the issue of rural-urban drift and the power of "rural memory" in constructing

notions of authenticity. The three sections that follow focus on the Ramayan mandali, the

most widespread type of Sanatani singing ensemble in Fiji. The first discusses the

ensemble's organization before turning to a detailed ethnography of its most common

performance genre, the recital (path) of the Rdmcaritmdnas. The second examines the

Ramayan mandali's involvement with annual performance events, particularly the

Ramlila festival, which remains an important marker of the Sanatani community despite

growing criticisms that the festival has become "secularized." The third section analyzes

issues of standardization, gender, subethnicity, and community building. As I

demonstrate, the performance of the weekly recital, which combines religious devotion,

moral didacticism, and social intercourse, contributes to—and sometimes challenges—

the notion of a "Sanatani community" formed along patterns of inclusion and exclusion,

particularly regarding women and Hindus of South Indian descent.

177The "first city" is the capital Suva in southeastern Viti Levu, which is easily six times the size ofLautoka in terms of population and peri-urban expanse.

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Following these sections on the Ramayan mandali, I turn to the intersection of

Hinduism and Islam in musical performance through a focus on two genres of devotional

singing: "tambura bhajan" and "qawali." The tambura bhajan, held by its performers to

be among the oldest of local bhakti singing styles, is a fixture at Hindu funerary rites, just

as qawali singing remains a staple of both Hindu and Muslim weddings. Despite the

Islamic associations of qawali, Hindu singers dominate both genres, and organized

singing competitions have emerged as an important secondary performance context for

both tambura bhajan and qawali. The final section revisits various genres examined in

this chapter and chapter 6 in light of the local discourse over musical style and viable

authenticity. Here I present several voices or "subject positions" from my field research

with differing perspectives on the appropriateness and effectiveness of "local folk

music," Hindi film tunes, and classical Indian art music. I am, in this section, particularly

interested in the discourse of classicization, its relationship to Sanskritization, and its

impact on the local folk music genres common to the practice of Ram-bhakti and

Brahmanical orthodoxy.

Lautoka: Urban Drift and Rural Memory

The city of Lautoka, built on labor and industry, grew up around the indigenous

Fijian village of Namoli following the construction of a CSR sugar mill and wharf in

1903. By 1910, rail lines connected the mill with sugarcane plantations as far as Ba to the

north and Sigatoka to the south. The colonial character of the city during the late

246

indenture period (circa 1917) is apparent in the following passage written by a mill

overseer named Walter Gill, which describes the day of his arrival:

Down on the wharf, brown faces were turned upwards to the ship's deck.Instead of Melanesia, I might have been in the Orient. A helmetedEuropean in white uniform with silver chain epaulettes was plainly apoliceman; behind him the constable in khaki and brass was a Sikh. Andboth were surrounded by men from one end of India to the other—fromthe Punjab, Madras, the Central Provinces, Afghanistan and Malabar....Afterwards, I did not remember seeing a single Fijian during my first dayin Fiji. (1970:24-25)

Another sketch of Lautoka, from the mid 1930s, comes from travel writer Nancy Walker

in language typical of the day:

The suburbs are represented by streets and cross-streets of tin huts, fromwhich the teeming Asiatic life within overflows on to doorways and steps,until all the near foreground is higgledy-piggledy with children andchickens. As in India itself there is a ceaseless coming and going of thin-legged men. Elbowing the growing cane at a street corner is a minarettedand domed white temple that acknowledges that even the coolie does notlive by sugar alone.... Nearer the waterfront is the grass-hutted Fijianvillage, apparently having no more dealings with its alien neighbours thanhad the Jews with the Samaritans. (1936: 116-17)

The "suburbs" that Walker describes were the "Coolie Settlements" of time-

expired Indian laborers, who named their new boroughs after places in India, such as

"Benares Free." Today, the placards of local buses leaving the Lautoka station carry the

names of these Indian-named neighborhoods, including Benares, Kashmir, and Simla.

Other Lautoka neighborhoods maintain colonial names, such as Field 40 and Rifle Range,

or indigenous Fijian names, such as Natabua and Waiyavi. The close proximity of house

rows in Lautoka's neighborhoods differs greatly from the isolation of homesteads in the

247

expanse of rural Indian settlements. Certain areas or streets may have a concentration of

Indo-Fijian or indigenous Fijian families, but all neighborhoods are essentially mixed.

Since the Lautoka mill opened in the same year that girmitiya recruitment began in

Madras, there is a relatively high percentage of Indo-Fijians of South Indian descent in

northwestern Viti Levu, and many of the earliest Hindu temples in Lautoka were

established by Sangam and dedicated to Devi (Gillion 1977: 110). Various places of

worship stand along the main boulevard, reflecting the diversity of Lautoka's Indo-Fijian

community. These include a Sanatani Vishnu mandir, a Sikh gurdwara, a Sunni mosque

(the "white temple" mentioned by Walker), and a Hare Krishna (ISKON) temple. Despite

high emigration rates, Lautoka continues to grow, stretching into the foothills of the

picturesque Mount Evans range to the east. The population of Lautoka at the 2007 census

was 52,742, including peri-urban areas, with 48 percent comprised by Indo-Fijians and

46 percent comprised by indigenous Fijians.178 With most tourists heading to resort-rich

Nadi to the south, Lautoka remains a city of industry and commerce, notable for its large

market, sports stadium, and modest nightlife, including a few Bollywood-oriented

nightclubs. Lautoka also remains the center of the sugar industry and the headquarters of

the National Federation Party, which along with the Fiji Labour Party has historically

represented Indo-Fijian interests (see Figure 19).

As discussed in chapter 3, issues of land tenure and economic security in Fiji

have contributed to steady rural-urban drift leading to the growth of cities like Lautoka

1 no

This is a significant proportional shift from the 1996 census, which reports Indo-Fijians at 56 percentand indigenous Fijians at 37 percent. Source: Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Provisional Results-2007Population and Housing Census," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fi.

248

and Suva and the decline of agricultural towns like Labasa. By 2007, nearly51 percent of

Fiji's total population lived in urban areas.179 Although these trends affect all of Fiji's

ethnic groups, the non-renewal of ALTO land leases has made urban migration in Vanua

Levu and northwestern Viti Levu primarily an Indo-Fijian issue. The issue graduates to

crisis in the case of peri-urban squatter settlements, which in Lautoka are dominated by

former rural-dwelling Indo-Fijian families. Squatters, estimated to number 60,000 in Fiji,

generally live in loose collections of one or two-room makeshift houses constructed of

Figure 19: Downtown Lautoka. Lautoka, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

corrugated iron, plywood sheeting, or masonite (Lingam 2002: 29). A case study of one

exclusively Indo-Fijian squatter settlement in western Viti Levu found a lack of social

participation and leisure activities (e.g. musical performance), which in the words of the

author, "gave the impression that [the inhabitants] were discontented and desperate"

179Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Provisional Results-2007 Population and Housing Census," Fiji

Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj.

249

(Chaudhary 1987: 162). Despite the perception that Indo-Fijians dominate Fiji's

economy, statistics show a higher percentage of Indo-Fijian families below the poverty

line than indigenous Fijians (proportional to their respective general populations), which

some observers attribute to governmental policies such as affirmative action plans for

indigenous Fijians and the failure of land tenure reform.180 My work with Ramayan

mandalis in Lautoka brought me into a variety of Indo-Fijian households ranging from

those of the working poor to those of the middle class (in my estimation). In fact, through

its participation in a mandali, an urban family extends its support group, mitigating the

risks of poverty.

Several of the Ramayan mandali members I interviewed in Lautoka had

themselves migrated to the city from a rural settlement, in some cases from as far as

Labasa on Vanua Levu. There is a curious discourse about the urban and rural that,

depending on whom you ask, valorizes one and laments the other. More intriguing still is

that the islands of Viti Levu (with Suva and Lautoka) and Vanua Levu (with Labasa) tend

to stand in for "urban" and "rural" respectively in this discourse. Adrian C. Mayer

detected this mutual sense of difference between these locales during his rural fieldwork

in Fiji over fifty years ago:

Those on the larger island said that their compatriots on Vanua Levu wereat least a decade behind the times, since they had retained customs fromIndia which the Viti Levu people had jettisoned under the impact ofmodern influences.... Vanua Levu people, on the other hand, considered

180

See, for example, Kumar and Prasad 2004: 481. Among other statistics, the authors quote their 2001survey sponsored by the National Federation Party, which found 48.4 percent of Indo-Fijian urbanhouseholds in "basic needs poverty," and the Fiji 1996 Census, which found 46 percent of all Indo-Fijianhouseholds in a "below average or inferior condition" (ibid.: 478).

250

the Viti Levu people to be over-interested in money and to lack sincerity.(1961: 179)

During my fieldwork in Lautoka, I found this discourse to be intact, widespread, and

fairly consistent. My field consultants from Labasa routinely claimed that the manner in

which devotees performed Ramayan recitals, wedding rituals, or the Ramlila in their

hometown was somehow more authentic and "correct" than their counterparts in Lautoka.

Said Rajen, a mandali member from Labasa: "In Labasa, Vanua Levu, you'll see that

people are well-versed in their religion and culture. What ever they do, they do it rom

their heart. But in Viti Levu you won't see that—most people are not interested in their

culture." In the reverse perspective, the attitude of Lautoka "natives" to the rural practices

of Vanua Levu tended to correlate, as discussed below, with levels of education and

class. In many cases, however, the lack of modernity associated with their rural

counterparts was accompanied by a quiet respect for their dedication to tradition, and this

appreciation extended to certain areas of rural Viti Levu, such as Sabeto. I frequently

heard comments such as "In Labasa they do the real Hinduism" or "You have to go to a

wedding in the Ba interior to see the real culture." Mahen, a member of a Lautoka

mandali whose family had migrated from a nearby rural area, told me, "Nowadays, we

have work commitments, but in the olden days, people were more committed to religious

things. People used to work on the farm, then come and do the Ramayan.... They would

really go to the depth, dig everything out, and put it in their minds."

In many ways, this discourse is typical of rural-urban dichotomies that

romantically locate authenticity in the fields and in the past, and it this process that I refer

251

to as "rural memory." But what strikes me about Lautoka's rural memory, whether

articulated by first generation migrants or felt collectively by a now-urban community, is

the degree to which notions of rural performance style correlate with a concept of sincere

and effectual religious practice—demonstrative, in other words, of a viable authenticity.

The relationship between rural memory, authenticity, and performance style underlies the

following ethnography of Ramayan mandali performance practices, and I return to this

discourse in the concluding section of this chapter.181

The Ramayan Mandali: Organization and Weekly Ramayana Recital

As chronicled in earlier chapters, the Ramayan mandali emerged during the 1930s

and1940s as the fundamental institution of Sanatan Dharm practice in Fiji, partly through

the influence of visiting Hindu missionaries from India. "Mandali" (mandli) means

"circle" or "group," and a typical Ramayan mandali is a voluntary association often to

forty men who meet on a regular basis to sing from and expound on Tulsidas' Ramayana,

182

the Rdmcaritmdnas. Based on research during the mid-1970s, Ian K. Somerville

concluded that three out of every ten adult Sanatani males were members of a Ramayan

mandali with an estimated total number of 400 to 500 Ramayan mandalis Fiji-wide, only

1 O1

The degree to which musical practices actually differ between rural areas (like Labasa) and urban areas(like Lautoka) is not so interesting to me as the perception among my field consultants that they do. Whenpossible, I note differences that I either observed or directly heard about through interviews, although myexposure to "Labasa culture" in situ is restricted to a brief visit to Vanua Levu during 2004. There are, forexample, clear differences in the dialect and accent of Fiji Hindi speakers between Vanua Levu and VitiLevu. Nevertheless, Mayer found that "in all important respects settlements on the two islands weresimilar" (1961: 179).182

The Ramayan mandali is also common in other former labor colonies of the South Asian diaspora,including Trinidad (Myers 1998:276), Mauritius (Boodhoo 1999: 88), and South Africa, where it ishistorically known as the Ramayan Sabha (Shukla 2002: 124).

252

half of which were registered with the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha of Fiji

(1986: 94). During my fieldwork period, there were thirty-eight Ramayan mandalis

registered with the Lautoka branch of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, and Sabha officials

indicated that there was still a large percentage of mandalis that remained unaffiliated

with their organization.183 The only requirement for registration is a small annual fee paid

to the district branch of the Sabha. Apart from statistics, it was difficult to avoid the

perception that mandali activity was widespread in Lautoka: on Tuesday nights, the most

popular evening for Ramayana recital, when the mandali I was sitting with paused

between songs I would usually hear the singing of other mandalis that carried over from

nearby streets. Several of the mandalis I worked with had been founded decades earlier

by a previous generation, and Somerville notes that two of the three mandalis he studied

had operated continuously since 1932 (1986: 99).184

The name of a Ramayan mandali will often contain clues to its composition,

affiliation, and activities. For example, names with the word "Navyuwak" (nav-yuvak,

"young man") suggest that young men originally founded the mandali, while names with

the word "Baal" (bal "child") indicate that the mandali endeavors to involve children.

Most mandali names will also include a religious word or phrase, such as "Saraswati"

(Sarasvati, goddess of knowledge and music), "Satsang" (satsang, "fellowship of the

183

Further indication of mandali numbers is provided by the newsletter of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabhadistrict branch of Rewa, a populous peri-urban and semi-rural area to the east of Suva. In 1997, there wereseventy-six Ramayan mandalis registered with the Sabha, and each was listed by name in the newsletter(Prasad 1997: 1).184

During the course of fieldwork in Fiji, New Zealand, and the USA, I have directly observedperformances by over twenty different Ramayan mandalis. Of these, I selected a few mandalis to sit withrepeatedly in order to deepen our rapport and increase my understanding of their organization andperformance style.

253

virtuous"), or "Vidhya Sagar" (vidhyd sdgar, "ocean of knowledge"). Names may also

include reference to the mandali's geographic area of residence, occupational affiliation,

and membership status with the Sabha. Most regional police departments form their own

Ramayan mandalis, and there was even a mandali formed on the remote island of

Makogai, a quarantine and treatment center for leprosy patients (Somerville 1986: 99).

Finally, mandalis that include bhajan singing as a part of their regular meetings or

specialize in the Faag repertoire will include the words "Bhajan" and "Faag"

respectively. The result is that most mandalis have formidable names, such as the

following Lautoka-area Ramayan mandali that included several members employed by

the Gandhi Primary School: Shri Sanatan Dharm Gandhi Navyuwak Ramayan Bhajan

Faag Mandali.

While some Ramayan mandalis are attached to Hindu temples, most operate

domestically, meeting in private homes. Each mandali functions as a micro-community

involving family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors and crosscutting issues of gender,

age, class, and subethnicity. As discussed in chapter 5, mandalis are essentially

egalitarian associations, although each will have a committee of officers who are elected

by the due-paying members at the mandali's annual general meeting. These positions

include Pradhan (President), Up-pradhan (Vice-President), Mantrl (Secretary), and

Khajdnchi (Treasurer). Ramayan mandalis are typically male-only associations, although

as discussed below, certain mandalis are challenging this tradition. Even among the

men's mandalis, the wives and other female relatives of the members play an essential

role behind the scenes at weekly Ramayan recitals and other events. Despite frequent

254

complaints made by the older generation that the Indo-Fijian youth of today lack an

interest in religious activities, I observed a healthy number (again, in my estimation) of

teenagers and young men participating in Ramayan mandalis. While the age of members

ranged between twenty and sixty, I worked with one mandali run by a committee of

officers entirely in their late teens that were also the primary singers in the Ramayana

recital. A single mandali is also likely to encompass a range of class positions, with

members holding a variety of occupations including laborer, taxi driver, office worker,

and business owner. Finally, as discussed below, Ramayan mandalis draw membership

from Hindus of both North Indian and South Indian heritage. Although recital of the

Hindi (Awadhi) Rdmcaritmdnas is a North Indian tradition, the popularity of this practice

among South Indians in Fiji demonstrates the status of this text as the "Hindu Bible" of

the labor diaspora. In some cases, Ramayan mandalis are exclusively South Indian in

membership, although it is becoming more common to find mixed mandalis comprised of

both North and South Indian members.

The "recital" (path) of the Rdmcaritmdnas occurs once a week, with each member

of the mandali hosting the event at his house in turn. Ramayana recitation is a year-round

practice, although most mandalis take breaks during the Christmas holiday and pitr-paks,

the two-week period in late summer reserved for the remembrance of ancestors. Tuesday

is, by far, the most popular day for recitation, which typically occurs between 7 and 9:30

P.M. Mandalis consistently give the same reason for this: Tuesday is "Hanuman's day,"

255

185

and therefore the most appropriate day for Ram-bhakti. As a result, most Sanatanis

remain vegetarian on Tuesdays and avoid alcohol, the required gestures of self-imposed

restraint (niyam) that, together with bathing, ensure a state of saf, or ritual cleanliness.

Due to work considerations, a minority of mandalis in Lautoka opts to meet on Fridays

instead, and Saturday evening remains a popular choice for special gatherings for

Ramayana recitation, usually by invitation. Upon arrival, the mandali members take their

seats on the floor in a rough circle in a front room cleared of its furniture or on the

verandah. The women of the house finish preparing the prasdd (food offerings) in the

kitchen and find a place to sit, usually in a doorway adjacent to the mandali circle from

which they view the proceedings. A group of neighbors, often the female relatives of

other mandali members, fill out the "congregation" and claim floor space in the

periphery. The members unpack and distribute their musical instruments along with

several photocopied packets of prayer and song texts. The Ramayan mandali forms the

typical music ensemble described in chapter 6, including harmonium, dholak, dahda tdl,

jhanjh, and other idiophones. The members arrange a small altar, generally called sthan,

on which they place lithographs or small statues of Ram, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman, and

other deities. Finally, the members bring out their large copies of the Ramcaritmdnas

(usually two or three per mandali), unwrap them from their protective ochre slips, and

place them on low wooden stands before the mandali's primary readers.185Other devotees added that Ram was born on a Tuesday. Somerville suggests a secondary reason for the

widespread popularity of Tuesday as the day for Ramayana recital: "[W]hen the sugar mills were operatingseven days a week, mill hands and cane cutting gangs were only allowed one free day a week; the Fijianlabourers were given Sunday off because they were Christian and the Indians were given Wednesday,which meant they could go on singing late into Tuesday night" (1986: 17).

256

As discussed below, mandalis that I observed demonstrated a remarkable

uniformity of practice for Ramayana recital, which generally followed the same sequence

of ritual, employed the same manner of exegesis, and often utilized the same melodies in

the course of singing the Ramayana text and its accompanying bhakti repertoire. The

ritual structure of Ramayana recital follows a sequence designed to welcome Ram into

the presence of the mandali, which several devotees explained to me through the analogy

of welcoming an honored guest into one's home: the guest is respectfully entreated to

visit, given a proper welcome, served a delicious meal, offered a chance to rest, and

accorded a fitting send-off. Therefore, in bhakti philosophy, the ritual structuring of the

Ramayana recital creates a space for sdmlpya, the beatific state of sharing god's presence.

As a houseguest, Ram is intimately reachable and knowable by the gathered devotees

who sing his praises, petition him with prayer, and enjoy his blessings. Ritual cleanliness

is both a prerequisite and a result of participation in the recital. As Naresh, a pracharak,

told me, "Regardless of how impure we are inside and out, when we link ourselves

187

mentally to god, we become pure." The overall arc of the recital builds through steps

of purification and preparation (the mantra and vandana) and the invitation and welcome

186

In diachronic terms, the ritual sequence of Ramayan recital observed by Somerville in western VitiLevu during the mid-1970s is more or less identical to that which I observed during 2005-2006 (1986: 96-97). In synchronic terms, several of my field consultants from Labasa claimed that mandalis on VanuaLevu performed a hawan (fire sacrifice), the "highest" form of ritual offering, at every weekly recital. Inwestern Viti Levu, hawan is generally reserved for Ram katha or recitals on special occasions, such as RamNaumi.187

As Frank Whaling observes, Tulsidas emphasizes the benefits of seeing Ram and enjoying his presence(the state of sdmipya) in the Rdmcaritmanas and, in fact, values this state above the goals of jnana—religious knowledge—and moksa—union with god (1980: 300). As discussed in chapter 5, Sanatanis in Fijiascribe a comparable primacy to bhakti, which informs the shape of ritual far more than concerns regardingmoksa (see also Wilson 1979: 105).

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of Ram (the sumarni and drati) before reaching the recital proper, for which the mandali

sings the text of the Rdmcaritmdnas and the pracharak divines its meaning and

application. Following the recital proper, the ritual sequence initiates its return to the

mundane with a farewell for Ram (the visarjan) and a series of closing prayers (the santi

path). Before departing, all devotees will consume the prasdd (sanctified food), and most

will stay late into the evening singing devotional songs and socializing.

The ritual begins with a series of benedictory and invocatory chants, a collection

of mantra (Sanskrit or Vedic verses) and vandand (praise-verses), generally called

mahgaldcaran. These verses, printed in the mandali's photocopied packet, are fairly

uniform in Ramayana recital, although the exact number and type will vary from group to

group. The most common verses invoke a roster of deities beginning with Ganesh, while

others draw from well-known Hindu hymns, such as the Gdyatri Mantra and Sdntdkaram

Bhujagasayanam. While some mandalis intone the mahgaldcaran in a simple, unison

chant, others perform it with full musical accompaniment. One mandali, dominated by

young men, adapted a Hindi film song for this purpose: 'Time di beqarari ("You made

me restless") from the 2005 film Blackmail. The mahgaldcaran functions to prepare the

domestic space for Ram's "arrival," cleansing the heart of each devotee and turning his or

her mind to god. Having unequivocally transitioned into the domain of the sacred, the

mandali moves on to the sumarni, a prayer song that, as we saw in chapter 6, commences

most Sanatani rituals. For Ramayana recital, mandalis use a particular Ramdyan sumarni

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pieced together from various sorathds (couplets) in the Bal kdnd of the Rdmcaritmdnas,

188

adding a concluding "dohd" of four couplets from the same source. The composite

poem, once again, praises various gods before paying respects to Valmiki (the saint-

composer of the original Rdmdyana), the Vedas, Dashrath (Ram's father), Hanuman, and

finally Ram and Sita, who are requested to accept an offering of flowers. During the

course of my fieldwork, I heard a handful of tunes used for the Rdmdyan sumarni,

although one in particular had the greatest currency (see partial transcription in Musical

Example 7). Like the majority of songs and text settings performed during Ramayana

recital, the sumarni follows a simple quadratic meter, sometimes called kaherva. At the

close of the song, all of the mandali members launch into a vigorous litany of praise for

Ram, Shiva, Hanuman, Krishna, Tulsidas, and the Sanatan Dharm religion, with each

subject followed by a shout of ki jay ("hail to..."). It is the sumarni, according to

devotees, that actually wins the attention of Ram and ushers him into the presence of the

mandali and gathered devotees.

Now that the presence of Ram has been secured, the devotees, led by the male

head of the household, his wife, and children (the mukh-srotd), make the five offerings

typical of Sanatani puja: a garland of flowers, the burning of incense, the placing of the

forehead mark (tilak), the offering of food (prasad), and the lighting of an oil lamp

(diya). The honorific gesture of waving the dlyd on a tray in a clockwise circular motion

1188

Specifically, the sumarni includes sorathds 1 through 5, 14 (D through F), 16, and 17, dohas 14-G and18, and two other dohds that I cannot identify (using the Gita Press edition and numbering system; Tulsidas2001).

259

lovely fame of Sita's lord").191 Many mandalis interweave a couplet from a popular

bhakti bhaan into the performance of the drati in a manner similar to the singing of the

Ramayan caupdi (see below for a description of this process). At the close of the song the

mandali members rise, and one member performs dratl over an open copy of the

Rdmcaritmanas while the others place a hand on his back or elbow to connect themselves

to the salutary effects of this ritual gesture. As they do this, they perform a Sanskrit sloka

(a type of poetic verse) in praise of Shiva, which they sing a cappella and in unison using

a stepwise melody with an arched contour.192 The dratl tray is then passed from devotee

to devotee, while the mandali performs a kirtan (responsorial devotional song) on an

appropriate theme.193 Although the dratl ceremony typically concludes Hindu programs

in India, in Fiji the ritual constitutes the final step in the preparatory sequence that

precedes and frames the recital proper. As one pracharak described it, by performing

dratl, devotees absorb any suffering that god may have endured in the earthly presence of

his followers.

For the weekly Tuesday sittings, the Ramayana recital proper begins from the

place in the narrative that concluded the previous sitting, thus carrying the story forward

a few pages each week. As detailed in chapter 5, the most common poetic meters in the

Rdmcaritmdnas are the caupdi (quatrain of short lines) and doha (couplet with end-

191This is Philip Lutgendorf s translation (1991: 72).

192Recall that Shiva is one of the narrators in the Rdmcaritmdnas and is therein described as a great

devotee to Ram.193

A kirtan on Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, is very popular here, while other mandalis may use thistime to sing Ram bandana (a kirtan on Ram) or Bhog Ram rasiya (a kirtan on the blessing of prasda).

261

rhyming), which form a repeating "stanza" of four caupdis followed by a dohd.194 A core

group of three to four men within the mandali, positioned behind opened copies of the

text, sings the stanza, which is then explained and interpreted by the mandali's pracharak.

In a typical recital, a mandali will cover either three or five stanzas, depending on the

time available and the length of the pracharak's discourse. Most mandalis are careful to

proceed with an odd number of stanzas since even numbers are considered less

auspicious in Sanatan Dharm, although very few devotees could explain the reason

behind this belief. At this pace, a mandali will typically take at least four years to recite

the Rdmcaritmdnas in its entirety, at which point the group starts again from the

beginning. The stanzas were written by Tulsidas in Awadhi, a vernacular dialect of Hindi,

which most devotees in Fiji claim is intelligible, although archaic and idiosyncratically

rendered.195 As one devotee explained to me, the Ramayan mandali plays an important

role in the maintenance of Hindi literacy: "Our mandali is a 'learning mandali'....

Everybody's given a chance, whether you've got broken Hindi or can't read. In fact,

when I started reading Ramayan [sitting with a mandali], I could not read Hindi." Still,

the pracharak's summary and explication of the stanza, delivered in Standard Hindi, is an

essential service for those devotees who fail to follow Tulsidas' language.

194This follows Lutgendorf s use of "stanza" for the caupdi-dohd combination, which has no equivalent

term in Hindi (1991: 14). The number of caupdis preceding a dohd will occasionally exceed the standardfour, just as a pair of dohds may occasionally replace the standard single dohd.195

Observers sometimes compare Tulsidas' sixteenth-century Awadhi to Shakespeare's English in termsof modern intelligibility, although Lutgendorf feels that the King James Bible is a more apt comparison(1991: 418). On Tulsidas' idiosyncratic use of language and spelling, Edwin Greaves writes,, "He does notgo in search of a word to fit into a certain corner, as a meaner poet would do, but takes the word mostsuitable in meaning and makes it fit, and it is wonderful how snug and comfortable these words look andsound, after the eye and ear have had a little practice" (1895: 9).

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The majority of the mandalis I sat with in Lautoka employed a performance style

for the caupdl that, like the katha discussed in chapter 6, incorporated the refrain and

original melody of a well-known semiclassical of filmi bhajan. In other words, for each

stanza the mandali creates a "kirtan" (kirrtan), a call and response style hymn that, in this

case, employs the four caupais for its verses and the bhajan refrain for its chorus.

Ultimately, the kirtan concludes with the dohd, which ends the stanza using its own

characteristic melody, as described below. Each mandali will typically have a repertoire

of six to ten bhaja refrains for this purpose, which they generally refer to as bdni,

meaning "verse" or "teachings." Most banis derive from semiclassical bhakti bhajans

popularized by Hindi films, famous Indian singers, or well-known international

Ramayana expounders. For example, one common bdni borrows from the Ram-bhakti

bhajan "Jaijai Tulsi" :

Jay jay tulasl jayjay ram, jay jay laksmanjay hanumanHail to Tulsidas, and victory to Ram, Lakshman, and Hanuman

Another utilizes the chorus of Ravindra Jain's famous bhajan "Ram Slya Ram"

Ram slya ram slya ram jay jay ramVictory to Ram and Sita

196

This bhajan appeared in the 1977 Hindi film Dulhan Wohi Jo Piya Man Bhaaye ('The Bride is Pleasingto her Beloved") and again in Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan TV serial (1987-1988), for which Ravindra Jainprovided the music.

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Other banis use the melodies of Hindi film songs, such as "Calat musafir by Manna

Dey, with their lyrics altered to an appropriate Ram-bhakti theme.197 A few banis claim

local authorship with melodies set by the mandali. The melody established by the bdrii

will usually be used to sing the caupdl as well; alternatively, the caupdl is set to a simple

melody that "fits in" with the bani chorus. The mandali will select the appropriate bdriis

in advance, although most are general enough in textual content to be matched with

caupdls on any theme. By turning the stanzas of the Rdmcaritmdnas into a kirtan, the

mandali extends the number of singers from three or four (those singing the caupdls) to

the entire mandali (who interject with the bdnl chorus).

In order to illustrate the manner in which a mandali incorporates a particular bdnl

into the singing of caupdls, I turn now to an example from my fieldwork. In this case, the

bdnl derives from the semiclassical bhajan "Raghupati Rdghav Rdjd Ram" ("Lord Ram,

Chief of the house of Raghu"), composed by V.D. Paluskar, one of the early proponents

of the "stage bhajan" genre that emerged in early twentieth-century India (Manuel 1993:

108). "Raghupati Rdghav Rdjd Ram" became closely associated with Gandhi and Indian

independence, achieving a stature, in the words of Stephen Slawek, "almost rivaling that

of the national anthem" (1996: 76). The bhajan, widely recorded by singers such as M.S.

197The use of "Calat musafir" ("The Passing Traveler") from the 1966 film Teesri Kasam ("The Third

Vow") is noteworthy because the song is meant to resemble a folk-style bhajan from the hinterlands ofUttar Pradesh. Indeed, in the film the singers sit in a tight, mandali-style circle playing folk instruments andshouting "Rama!" between the verses. The incorporation of this melody into local musical practice suggeststhat Indo-Fijians recognize this North Indian folk style—although filtered through the film industry—astheir own, representing a heritage associated with their girmitiya predecessors. I discuss this phenomenonin chapter 9 in relation to the "Bhojpuri" VCD.

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are entreated to rest. Like many passages in the Rdmcaritmdnas, the emphasis is on the

bliss of beholding god in Ram's form. This excerpt is from the middle of the stanza199:

Caupai: Jani sramita siya mana mahim, gharika bilambu kinha bata chdhlmMudita nari nara dekhahim sobha, rupa anupa nayana manu lobha

Barii: Raghupati rdghav Raja Ram, patit pdvan sltd ram

Caupai: Ekataka saba sohahlm cahum ora, ramacahdra mukha camda cakoraTaruna tamala barana tanu soha, dekhata koti Madana manu aohd

Barii: Raghupati rdghav Raja Ram, patit pdvan sltd ram

The English translation reads200:

Caupai: On hearing their affectionate speech and seeing their great devotion, thecompassionate and most amiable Ram, who, moreover, perceived thatSita was wearied, rested for a while in the shade of the fig tree. All wereenraptured with his beauty—men and women alike—and their soul wasenamored of his incomparable loveliness.

Barii: Lord Ram, Chief of the house of Raghu, purifier of the fallen, Sita-Ram

Caupai: Like a circle of partridges gazing at the moon, they fixed their rapt andblissful gaze on Ram's face. At the sight of his body, dark in hue as ayoung tamal tree, a myriad Loves [madan, the "love god"] werefascinated.

Barii: Lord Ram, Chief of the house of Raghu, purifier of the fallen, Sita-Ram

Several pracharaks and mandali members claimed that using bani in Ramayana

recital represented a newer trend that not all Ramayan mandalis followed. At least one

199These caupais appear just prior to Doha 115 of the Ayodhya hand in the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas

2001:453).200

For the caupdis, I use F.S. Growse's translation (1978: 292-93).

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pracharak—again, like those discussed in chapter 6—cited the visit of international

expounder Ramesh Bhai Oza as his primary influence for incorporating barns into his

performance of caupdl. While I did hear some mandalis in rural areas singing caupdl

without the use of barns, nearly all of the mandalis I observed in urban areas like Lautoka

not only used barns but also tended to have the same repertoire of barns at hand. A few

older pracharaks recalled the melodies used by their predecessors to sing the Ramayana.

One, named Shiu, identified two melodies by name—rddhesydm dhun and tulsldds

dhun—although he revealed that, while the tunes were similar to those performed by the

girmitiyas, he had actually learned them from a recording from India. However,

Naresh, another pracharak, shared a melody that he had heard his father sing for caupdl

when he was a young boy (see Musical Example 9). Other devotees, when asked about

the style in which previous generations sang the caupdl, claimed that a tradition of

inserting religious words or phrases (such as Raghurdi) between the caupdl stretched

back to the girmitiyas. The Ramayana recital is indeed frequently punctuated with

invocations of Ram's name, such as Siyavar Ramcandraki jay\ ("Victory to Ram, Sita's

Lord!"), and the current trend of bookending caupais with barns derived from the Indian

201

His radhesydm dhun may take its name from the Rddhesydm Ramayan, a popular mid-twentieth-century retelling of the Ramayana in common Hindi by Pandit Radhey Shyam Katha Vachak. His tulsiddsdhun was identical to a melody that Lutgendorf identifies as Tulsi vani, which is used for most Ramayanarecitations in Banaras, India (1991: 69). This melody also has wide circulation in the media and figures intothe theme song of Sagars Ramayan TV serial and playback singer Mukesh's widely distributed recordingsof the Ramcaritmanas. The word dhun means "melody."

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careful to cover their textual content in his subsequent explication. It was during the

annual Ram Naumi festival (commemorating Ram's birth) that I noticed mandalis adding

chands to their repertoire.

The celebration of Ram Naumi (Ram navrmi) is typically orchestrated by a

particular Ramayan mandali to serve its community and consists of nine days of

Ramayana recitals. The recitals are held during the evenings except for the final day,

which features a morning recital timed to conclude at noon, the hour of Ram's birth. At

one such event as devotees hung a colorfully decorated cradle-swing (jhula) to welcome

the infant Ram, the mandali launched into a chand describing the moment of his birth.

Led by the dholak, dahda tal, and jhanjh, the pracharak delivered the chand in a simple

melody over a moderately paced quadratic rhythm with a characteristic halting

syncopation :

Bhae pragata krpala dinadaydld kausalyd hitakarl,harasita mahatdrl muni mana hari adbhuta rupa bicdrl.Locana abhirdmd tanu ghanasydmd nija dyudha bhuja carl,bhusana banamdla nayana bisala sobhdsimdhu kharrari.

The gracious Lord, who is compassionate to the lowly and the benefactor ofKausalya, appeared.

The thought of His marvelous form, which stole the heart of sages, filled themother with joy.

His body was dark as a cloud, the delight of all eyes; in His four arms He bore Hischaracteristic emblems.

203This is the tempo generally called teka. This meter, with its distinctive quarter note-double eighth note

pattern, is similar that employed for the Faag repertoire (see chapter 6).

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Adorned with jewels and a garland of sylvan flowers and endowed with largeeyes, the Slayer of the demon Khara was an ocean of beauty.204

Finally, each stanza will end with a dohd, after which the mandali members

temporarily set down their instruments and the pracharak delivers his discourse on the

preceding material (generally called arth, meaning "purpose" or "meaning"). The style of

singing the dohd is remarkably consistent from mandali to mandali. Directly following

the final caupai, the music shifts from the bani melody to the distinctive melodic

statement that ushers in the dohd, which is sung by the core singers of the mandali (see

Musical Example 10). In performance, the singers repeat the second half of the first line,

in the following fashion (Tulsidas' text is in boldface):

Kamida mula phala surasa ati die rama kahu ani, o rama, die rama kahu aniprema sahita prabhu khae barambara bakhani siydvar rdmacandra ki jay

She brought and offered to Sri Ram the most delicious bulbs, roots, and fruits (ohRam) she brought and offered them to Sri Ram

The Lord partook of them again and again ... victory to Ram, Sita's Lord

204This is the translation from the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001: 190). This chand appears just prior to

Dohd 192 of Bal hand in this edition.205 ' '

During certain passages, Tulsidas replaces the dohd (a couplet with end rhymes) with a sorathd (acouplet with rhymes in the middle of each line). However, mandalis perform the sorathd in the style of adohd by singing the second half of the line first, thus shifting the rhyme to the end. For example, "asa nijahrdayam bicdri taju samsaya bhaju rama pada" would actually be performed as "taju sarhsaya bhaju ramapada asa nija hrdayam bicdri." This is Sorathd 115 of Bdl hand in the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001:122).206 The translation of the dohd is from the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001: 697). This is Dohd 34 ofAranya-hdnd in this edition.

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edition of the Ramcaritmanas in common use by mandalis. Pracharaks with a greater

confidence and ability will extemporize in the manner described for Ram katha in chapter

6 and bring in a host of other textual sources that support and supplement their discourse.

While the pracharak intends his explication of the Ramayana to guide and benefit the

lives of the gathered devotees, it is widely agreed that the Ramayana recital is not an

appropriate domain for directly addressing specific social and political issues such as the

expiry of land leases or the machinations of the government. As one pracharak told me in

Hindi, the lessons of the Ramayana are timeless and applicable to any situation in one's

life: "Regarding the things that are happening today and that which is written in the

Ramayan, it is sometimes said that these three discourses are one and the same [tino bat

mildye]: that which has happened, that which is happening now, and that which should be

done." As a dharmasastra, therefore, the interpretation of the Rdmcaritmdnas and its

application to daily life depends not only on the skills of the pracharak but also on the

imaginative reception of each listener.

Following the final stanza of the Ramayana recital proper, the mandali initiates

the process of bidding farewell to their "houseguest" and closing the ritual through a

series of hymns and mantras. Returning to their photocopied packets, the mandali sings

the visarjan, a concluding hymn addressed to Hanuman seeking the blessings of Ram,

207

The most widespread edition of the Rdmcaritmdnas in use by Ramayan mandalis is a popular editiondating to approximately 1906 with commentary by Pandit Jvalaprasad Mishra. It carries the titleSrimadgosvdmi Tulsidasji viracit ramayan, but it is better known as the sanjivani tika ("life-givingcommentary") or Tulsikrt Ramayana ("Ramayana composed by Tulsidas"). Unlike critical editions, such asthat by the Gita Press of Gorakhpur, Mishra's Tulsikrt Ramayana contains interpolated stories (ksepak),which, although not composed by Tulsidas, employ the same poetic meters.

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Lakshman, and Sita. As one devotee put it, "The visarjan is like when we finish dinner,

I'll take you to the car, make sure you're seated comfortably, and send you off." The

visarjan, meaning "sending away" or "departing," is a hymn often dohds, several of

which are attributed to Tulsidas although only two appear to derive from the critical

208

edition of the Ramcaritmanas. Although the hymn marks Ram's "departure," the text

emphasizes the long-term benefits of his darsan (presence) and the continuous merit of209

contemplating his deeds: "Oh Ramayan, please come and abide in my heart." Mandalis

employ a variety of melodies to sing the visarjan, and some groups insert a bani chorus.

The only consistency is that it is performed in unison, usually by the entire mandali.

Following the visarjan, the members chant an eight-line prayer beginning "Oh God,

please offer your forgiveness and remove all pain and suffering" before concluding with

the sdnti path, a mantra for peace.210

At gatherings with a large audience of devotees, such as Ram Naumi, a brief quiz

may follow the recital on the subject of the evening's discourse, usually delivered by the

pracharak. Designed especially for children, correct answers are rewarded with modest

gifts. After the distribution of prasdd (sanctified food), the mandali will usually sell raffle

tickets for a door prize as a fund-raising activity that, together with the money left on the211

drati tray and placed on the sthdn, will be deposited into the mandali's bank account.

908

These are Dohds 14(A) and 19(A) of Uttar kdnd in the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001).209

From a half- doha : ramayan mama hrday mem, dye karo turn vasa.210

The original Hindi in this translation: dur karo dukh dard sab ksamd karo bhagavan.211

Taking one mandali as an example, the combination of membership fees, donations, raffle ticket sales,and puja offerings produced a total of $994 FJD ($570 USD) raised during the 2005 calendar year.

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After covering the cost of puja materials, the mandali uses these funds to support its

community, donating money to families affected by a medical emergency, natural

disaster, sudden death, or other calamity. One mandali pooled its money to buy a "shed,"

which it loans out to families free of charge for weddings, funerals, and other events.

Occasionally, mandalis will donate to international causes, such as the 2004 Asian

Boxing Day tsunami. Finally, after the sthdn is dismantled and the copies of Ramayana

put away, the mandali gathers around a basin of kava, singing kirtans and bhajans for

about an hour.212 While passing small saucers of kava between songs, the mandali

members relax and enjoy themselves. They joke, gossip, and converse on a range of

topics including politics, sports, upcoming festivals, and the like. In the end, none of the

flowers and other materials used in the recital will be thrown into the trash—they must be

deposited into the sea or a nearby river.

The Ramayan Mandali: The Ramlila and other Activities

Apart from the weekly recital and Ram Naumi, a Ramayan mandali may

participate in several annual or periodic Sanatani events that deserve mention here. Much

like the Faag Competition described in chapter 6, a particular mandali or organization

may sponsor a "Ramayan Sammelan," a gathering of several mandalis that sing from and

expound on the Rdmcaritmdnas. Dating back to at least the 1950s, the Ramayan

Sammelan (sammelan, "gathering") brings together ten to twenty different mandalis from

212As is often said, "Kava is the national drink—it brings people together in Fiji." Piper methysticum,

known as yaqona, kava, or grog, is a beverage with anxiolytic (calming) effects, widely consumed by bothindigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, especially men. It is made by pounding the root of the kava plant into apowder, which is then mixed with cold water.

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a particular region for one to three days of recitation.213 Each mandali is allotted about

twenty minutes to perform, during which the group foregrounds its best singers, although

the event is not organized as a competition. A Ramayan mandali will sponsor a special,

more intimate kind of Ramayan Sammelan to commemorate its completion of the

Rdmcaritmdnas. For this event, called "Sampuran Yag" (sampurn yajna, "completion

rite"), the mandali will invite two other mandalis to join in the recitation, hire a pandit for

a hawan (fire-sacrifice), and prepare a large feast. At a prescribed time during the ritual,

the members of the sponsoring mandali will sing the final stanzas of the Rdmcaritmdnas,

thus marking the end of their epic recitation up to four years in the making. The Ramayan

Sammelan—and to a lesser extent, the Sampuran Yag—creates a forum in which a host

of mandalis from a general region, such as the peri-urban expanse of Lautoka, can share

the same space, listen to each other's performance styles, interact, and gain a face-to-face

sense of a larger Sanatani community. This occurs on the broadest scale at the annual

S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha convention, which not only invites mandalis from all over Fiji

but has also recently included groups of former Fiji residents from New Zealand and

Australia as well.

Finally, the Ramayan mandali is an integral component of the annual Ramlila

festival, which continues today in several locations around Fiji.214 As during the late

213The concept of Ramayan Sammelan may be modeled on the kathd sammelan (Ramayana expounders

festival) first held in Banaras, Uttar Pradesh, in 1924 (Lutgendorf 1991 : 61). The idea was likely importedto Fiji with Sanatani missionaries in the 1930s, and the Ramayan Sammelan was a fixture by the time theShri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha held its first Mahasammelan in 1959.214

As for other festivities of the Hindu ritual calendar, Ramayan mandalis will often celebrate Shivratriand Krishna Janmashtami (the birth celebrations of Shiva and Krishna respectively) in a manner similar toRam Naumi. The celebration of Diwali, on the other hand, is more family-based and will not generally

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indenture period (see chapter 4), the Ramlila continues to function as an annual inventory

of a regional Sanatani community and a spectacle of Indo-Fijian cultural, religious, and

economic achievement. Although space does not permit a full ethnography of this event,

I highlight here the aspects of the Ramlila festival that contribute to the fundamental

discourse underlying performance in Sanatani society, which asks: Has the festival

"degenerated" (as some would claim) into a mere secular form of "entertainment" or

does it remain a sacred service provided by and for a devout, religious community?

Over the course often nights, the Ramlila {Ramlila) employs a troupe of

costumed actors, dancers, musicians, and narrators to enact the most salient or popular

scenes from the Ramayana, all amidst the screams of children enjoying carnival rides and

fair-goers lining up for snacks, games of chance, or tattoos (see Figure 20). The Ramlila,

usually sponsored by a local branch of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, a Hindu temple, or an

"Indian school," is typically held during the Dasahra period prior to Diwali (September-

October). During my fieldwork year, I personally heard about four Ramlila productions

in western Viti Levu, two of which I was able to attend.215

The Lautoka Ramlila, held on a suburban soccer/rugby field, was initiated and

largely sponsored by a single Ramayan mandali that hired a troupe from Sabeto to direct

and enact the drama. The director of this troupe, who also narrated the proceedings, was

include mandali performance in the festivities. Less common than Ramlila are similar pageants that focuson other deities, including Ganeshlila, Vishnulila, Krishnalila, and Luv-Kushlila (which focuses on thestory of Ram and Sita's twin sons, Luv and Kush).

These four locations were Cuvu (near Sigatoka), Votualevu (near Nadi), Lautoka, and Tavua; I attendedthe latter two. Other locations, such as Navua (in southeast Viti Levu) and Labasa (on Vanua Levu) have along-standing annual tradition of Ramlila. In fact, the Labasa sugar mill temporarily halts crushing everyyear as time, resources, and attendance shift to the Labasa Ramlila. I also had access to a video of a Ramlilastaged at Masimasi (Sabeto) in 1995.

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Figure 20: Ram and Sita at Ramlila. Two young men play the leading couple, Ram and Sita. Tavua, Fiji,2005. Photo by K Miller.

Pandit Ranjeet Sharma, continuing a Ramlila tradition inherited from his father (see

chapter 6). The audience was, therefore, largely urban and peri-urban, although many,

like the actors, had traveled from remote rural locations to witness the event. The largest

crowd, approximately 2,500, turned up for the final and most popular evening, which

features the slaying of the demon Ravan and the burning of his body in effigy.216 As the

organizers frequently pointed out, their 2005 production had returned Ramlila to Lautoka

216

John D. Kelly's claim that Ramlilas in Fiji no longer climax with the burning of Ravan in effigy waspremature. Although true for the productions he observed in the Suva area, this was most likely an exampleof localized decline. This discrepancy, however, does not contradict his greater thesis that the "centre ofgravity in the Ramayan story has changed," shifting from an emphasis on exile and the triumph of goodover evil to an embrace of the Ramayana as a dharmasdstra capable of purifying and morally instructingSanatani society (Kelly 1988b: 48).

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after an absence of twenty years, and many residents were seeing the drama performed

for the first time. The Lautoka Ramlila, in this way, reflected a trend in Ramlila

production in place since approximately 1960: local revival amidst an overall pattern of

decline, characterized, in the words of Indo-Fijian writer Raymond Pillai, by a "loss of

Figure 21: Ramlila Puppets. Large puppet/effigies, depicting Jatayu, Surpanakha, and Ravan, await thestart of Ramlila. Tavua, Fiji, 2004. Photo by K. Miller.

vitality and erosion of... authenticity" (1979: 25). Some areas, formerly known for

hosting Ramlila, no longer stage the drama at all due to the impact of population and

capital depletion through urban drift and emigration.

The staging of Ramlila in Fiji follows a mixture of influences and conventions

with roots in the indenture period but subject, once again, to the affects of transnational

media, all of which is filtered through the available experience, resources, and capital of

the principals involved with its production. The action typically takes place in one

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location, an outdoor expanse of grass (approximately thirty by sixty meters) with a

scaffold platform at one end to represent the demon kingdom Lanka, and smaller

structures or benches placed around the grounds to represent other locations such as

Ayodhya, Mithila, Nandigrama, and the forests of Chitrakut and Dandak.217 The

Ramayan mandali takes its seat on a proscenium stage immediately adjacent to the

grounds while the audience observes the action from floor mats or bleachers placed

around the perimeter of the performance space. The organizers frame each evening with

the rites typical of a Sanatani event: Ramayan sumarni, drati, jhandd bandhan, and a

concluding visarjan. Within this structure, the Ramayana story advances by three or four

episodes per night with interludes of filmi/folk dancing and humorous exchanges in Fiji

Hindi by "joker" characters. In some productions, large, colorful puppet structures

made of cardboard, bamboo, wood, and cloth parade as body-doubles to the actors

portraying Ravan, Surpanakha, Jatayu, and other characters (see Figure 21). Frequently, a

simple rope and pulley system will send Hanuman "flying" over the heads of the

audience shouting "Jay sly a ram!" adding to the grandeur and spectacle of the event.

Following a convention of Indian folk theater, all of the actors and performers are male

with female roles portrayed by men dressed as women or by transgendered specialists.

Typically three to four performers of the latter type, generally called nacaniyd

217This arrangement, including the scaffold structure, is consistent with that portrayed in a photograph of

an early 20th century Ramlila production (most likely the Navua Ramlila directed by Pandit TotaramSanadhya) that appears in Rev. J. W. Burton's The Fiji of Today (1910: plate facing page 308).

For example, in the course of one evening, the actors depicted the visit to Atri and Anasuya'shermitage, the mutilation of Surpanakha, and Ravan's abduction of Sita. The Ramlila proper is furtherframed by a nightly episode, intended to be humorous, in which Parvati wakes Shiva from his deepmeditation and implores him to narrate to her the story of Ram.

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("dancers"), are hired by the Ramlila organizers to play the women's roles and entertain

the audience with bawdy songs and lahahgd ndc ("skirt dance").219 Some of the

costuming, particularly that for the actor playing Ravan, demonstrates an influence from

terukkuttu, a Hindu folk-drama derived from Tamil-speaking South India that remains

popular in Fiji in the context of firewalking rituals and South Indian weddings.

Additionally, the Ramlila troupe from Sabeto identified Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan TV

serial (1987)—widely disseminated in Fiji on video and DVD—as an influential source

for both costumes and episodic flow. During the course of the action, the

pracharak/director follows the actors around the performance space, prompting their

spoken dialogue and narrating to the audience. The Ramayan mandali provides incidental

music and, at the request of the director, is quick to sing a particular caupai or dohd in a

typical style (but withholding the bani chorus). The Rdmcaritmdnas, therefore, remains

219

I use the term "transgendered" here because most nacaniyd, although biologically male, maintain afeminine identity outside of the performance context including mannerisms and styles of hair and dress.Many, although not all, participate in Fiji's gay subculture. In addition to the Ramlila, nacaniyd findemployment at weddings and other religious events where they dance, sing, and otherwise entertain theguests. A few items in the historical record link the nacaniyd tradition to the indenture period and thus toIndia, such as the complaint of one Christian missionary who stumbled onto his "usual congregationengaged in the revels of an imitation nautch dance" in the plantation lines (Bavin 1914: 192). Indeed, thenacaniyd satisfy a social role similar to that of the hijra in India, although none described themselves bythis word, and I heard of no instances of castration or malformed genitalia. As Priyanka, a Lautoka-basednacaniyd put it, "They value us drag queens in the Indian community. It's just like we're god's gift. In ourreligion, they respect us."220

Sagar's Ramayan, itself largely based on the Rdmcaritmdnas, originally aired in India on the state-owned Doordarshan network, creating, in the words of Purnima Mankekar, "a discursive slippage betweenHindu culture and Indian culture overlapped with Hindu nationalist discourses of 'culture,' belonging, andnationhood" (1999: 182). The tremendous popularity of the series—together with its interpretation of theepic and religious didacticism—quickly spread to Fiji, reaching the islands via videocassette prior to theadvent of broadcast television in 1 9 1 . A shopkeeper in Lautoka described to me the demand for piratedcopies of the Ramayan series at that time: "We had about thirty recording machines, and we would just buyone tape, copy it three times during the night, and have about ninety films ready. And next morning everypiece would be sold." Of course, in terms of its influence on Ramlila in Fiji, the Ramayan video had itselfbeen influenced by Ramlila productions in India, especially in terms of costuming and iconography(Lutgendorfl990: 144).

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central to the narrative of the Ramlila, which concludes, like Tulsidas' epic, with Ram's

triumphant return to Ayodhya where he will rule as a wise and benevolent king.

Although both of the Ramlila productions that I attended in western Viti Levu

succeeded in drawing large crowds night after night, several of my field consultants

remained critical of the events, dismissing contemporary Ramlila productions in Fiji as

mere fundraising schemes lacking religious and artistic commitment. The majority of

Ramlila productions in Fiji's recent history are, indeed, fundraising events held for

primary and secondary schools, and the Ramayan mandali that sponsored the 2005

Lautoka Ramlila hoped to raise funds to build a community center. In truth, Ramlila

production in Fiji has always negotiated a delicate balance between religious observance

and commercial enterprise, and even during the indenture era the sanctified drama shared

its grounds with carnival festivities, wrestling matches, and stalls selling "toys, clothes,

musical instruments, sweets, food, fruits like cucumber, water-melon and paw-paw, and

jewellery" (Prasad 1974: 29). The organizers meticulously announce the name and

amount of each donation, honoring large donors—usually local business owners—with a

garland of flowers and a tilak during a nightly ceremony following the drati

Additionally, Ramlila presents politicians and community leaders with an opportunity to

increase their prestige and expand their appeal. Chief guests at Ramlila productions in

2005 included the Indian High Commissioner, Ajay Singh, and Fiji Labour Party

stalwarts Ganesh Chand and Mahendra Chaudhry. Beyond the Ramlila's commercialized

and politicized preamble, certain field consultants further criticized the quality of the

production itself, citing a loss of religious substance amidst "spectacle" and

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"entertainment." In some cases, this critique was regional. For example, spectators from

Labasa—the hub of rural authenticity, as discussed above—felt that the Lautoka Ramlila

"wasn't organized properly" and simply mimicked the Sagar Ramayan TV serial. In other

cases, observers complained that the comedic antics and sensual dances of the "jokers"

and nacaniyd distracted and detracted from the seriousness and sanctity of the main

event, the depiction of Ram's deeds and the explication of his teachings.

The organizers and participants of the Ramlila productions, on the other hand,

took measures to counter the perception of their critics, emphasizing the sincerity of their

religious conviction through preparations, practice, and discourse. Mahendra Prasad, the

pradhdn (president) of the mandali that initiated the Lautoka Ramlila, told me that the

production had not been successful as a fundraiser—due mostly to expenses—but that it

had exceeded all expectations as a "religious event," drawing thousands of devotees over

the course often days. Beginning at least a week prior to the Ramlila, the actors abstained

from meat, alcohol, and sexual relations in order to insure the state of "purity" (saf)

required to represent the divine characters of the Ramayana. As in North India (Sax 1995:

4), the more devout spectators at Ramlila in Fiji may see the costumed actors as actual

manifestations of the gods they portray, much in the way that temple statues contain the

presence of the deities they represent. While some actors spoke of "forgetting

themselves" in the course of depicting deities in the drama, others described the portrayal

as an act of self-conscious devotion. For example, Priyanka, a nacaniyd who had played

Sita in the Labasa production, told me, "When I dress for Sita's role, it's just me there,

not Sita. Sita is a god. I can't be a god."

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At the Lautoka Ramlila, the most conspicuous display of divinely sanctioned

efficaciousness—that is to say, viable authenticity—occurred when the actors engaged in

"miraculous" acts of devotion of the sort more often associated with Shakta (goddess)

festivals of "South Indian" Hindus: divine possession and so-called "torture rituals."221

For example, a man dressed in the red attire of Hanuman made a nightly appearance,

holding a camphor flame in his bare hand as he danced around the grounds followed by a

small army of boys dressed as monkeys. As the "spirit" and "power" of Hanuman

overtook him, he popped the burning camphor into his mouth and danced ecstatically

until his attendants physically restrained him. During an interlude on the penultimate

night, the actors in the principal roles—including Ram, Lakshman, Sita, Hanuman, and

Ravan—walked across a plank of upturned nails as a nacaniyd sang afilmi devotional

song to the accompaniment of the Ramayan mandali. In full view of the audience, the

senior nacaniyd then lit a camphor fire directly on the head of a young man seated in a

chair, and held a teapot over the flame until it boiled. The actors explained to me later

that, at the request of the organizers, they had performed these miraculous acts to prove

to the audience that they had achieved the state of ritual purity and readiness required to

portray the gods.

221Carolyn Henning Brown describes the "North Indian" co-opting of "South Indian" ritual practices in

Fiji, such as firewalking, knife-walking, nail-walking, and flesh piercing, as "power hungry" based on afew cases of individual ambition and glory-seeking (1984: 242). In contrast, certain North Indian panditshave claimed that "torture rituals" such as knife-walking and flagellation derive from North Indian Durgaworship (Sahadeo and Stella 1974: 14). During my fieldwork, I attended a popular annual Durga pujahosted by a North Indian pandit with a reputation for miraculous devotional acts, such as those describedabove. The event did not include firewalking, however, which is still strongly associated with South IndianShakta deities.

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Locating the "sacred" and the "secular" in Ramlila, therefore, depends on the

subject position of the observer and his or her personal stock in the viable authenticity of

each of the three phenomena discussed in the introduction to this chapter: locally-

sanctioned "folk" practices, mass media-influenced "popular" practices, and

classicization-derived "refined" practices. I return to this discussion in the concluding

section of this chapter below.

Keeping Good Company: The Ramayan Mandali, Satsahg, and Community

As mentioned earlier, Ramayan mandalis demonstrate a notable uniformity of

practice, particularly in the context of the Ramayana recital. Beyond consistencies in

ritual framing and sequence, each group tends to utilize a similar melodic repertoire and

performance style. There are primarily five interrelated domains of influence that have

effected the standardization of Ramayana recital among mandalis in Fiji and its diaspora.

The first corresponds to what I have called "rural memory" and encompasses the

inheritance of practices developed by girmitiyas and passed down from generation to

generation. Devotees articulate the precedent of Ramayana recitation established by

previous generations in statements such as this, conveyed to me by a pracharak: "In Fiji,

when the people came, they brought in their own way of singing, and most of the people

in the rural areas are following that, the traditional way." The second domain of

222Baldeo Prasad, a pracharak, provides a glimpse of Ramayan recital structure in Fiji circa 1923 that is, in

essence, identical to the procedure followed today. From his 1975 publication Ramopasak Shri KabirSahib, translated and quoted by Somerville: "In those days the program was thus: Ramayan Sumiran; thenafter Arti, up to five Dohas (and their following Chaupais) were said, and after that there would be rest fora while, or in the interval some Bhajans would be sung by Bhajan singers" (1986: 98).

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influence is local media, particularly the radio. From the advent of Hindi-language

programming in 1956, the Fiji Broadcast Commission has regularly recorded local

mandalis of top caliber in typical Ramayana recital style and broadcasted the

performances on the radio every Sunday (Somerville 1986: 124). Today, local mandali

recordings are still a regular feature on Fiji's two Hindi-language radio stations. The third

set of influences includes exposure to subcontinental and transnational sources through

travel and the media including tours by visiting Ramayana expounders and musicians, the

omnipresence of Hindi film music, and the widespread availability of semiclassical and

filmi bhajans. As we have already seen in chapter 6 with Ram katha performance, the

broad application of techniques gleaned from an international expounder or a melody

adapted from a popular film can have a homogenizing effect on local Ramayana recitals.

The fourth factor of influence includes locally published booklets and guides that cull

together important Sanskrit mantras and Hindi hymns, often in abbreviated form,

providing in essence the textual script that frames Ramayana recitation. Every Ramayan

mandali has some version of these local publications, usually stapled together in a

photocopied packet.

Finally, the fifth domain of influence affecting the standardization of Ramayana

recitation is the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha, which as the only nationwide religious body

overseeing Ramayan mandalis, occupies a position with great potential for leadership.

223Somerville notes influential publications produced during the late 1970s by Raghunandan Singh,

Swami Ram Naresh Acharya, and Pandit Vivekanand Sharma that, he says, appealed more to urban settlersthan to rural devotees (1986: 98). Around Lautoka, I saw mandalis using similar guidelines and collectionsby Pandit Shaligram Sharma (dating to the same period), Rajeshvar Prasad (1997), and others with noauthor identified. The content of each was very similar, with identical text for the main genres of recitalperformance such as Ramayan sumarni, Ramayan drati, and visarjan.

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While the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha—and particularly its branch overseeing religious ritual

(the Purohit Brahman Sabha)—figures prominently in Somerville's thesis regarding the

Sanskritization of Ramayan mandali practice, he concedes that the organization's

influence on the average mandali may have been minimal. Regarding a leadership battle

between Brahman and non-Brahman community leaders, he writes: "While this argument

continued between the hierarchy of the [S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha] and their critics, most

Mandlis continued in their own particular way, ready to join the festivities of the Annual

Conferences, but otherwise leading an independent existence" (1986: 130-31). Likewise,

several of my field consultants felt that the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha should do more to

guide, organize, and otherwise aid the activities of Ramayan mandalis. Said one

pracharak: "The other religious groups—the Sikhs, Muslims, Arya Samaji's—they are

very strong, they parade under one banner, and they have their policies laid out and

strictly followed. But our Sanatan Dharm is so wide ... they can't fix the boundaries, they

can't lay out their policies." Most initiatives occur at the level of regional branches,

although the national body of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha deserves credit for its annual

Sanatan convention, which draws together mandalis from all regions, providing a point of

focus for a national (and even transnational) Sanatan community.

The uniformity of Ramayan mandali practice is further indicative of a

fundamental concept of Ram-bhakti as practiced in Fiji that underlies the egalitarian

structuring of the mandali itself. Most devotees express this concept as satsahg, meaning

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"association with the virtuous or the good" or "good people or company."224 In John D.

Kelly's insightful analysis, the concept of satsahg is basic to the organization of Indo-

Fijian social relations. He writes, "The regular company of good, pure people, when

called satsahg, is known as a means of self-development, and is the definition of religious

community" (1988a: 100). During my fieldwork, devotees described Ramayan mandali

gatherings as constitutive of satsahg, which, they said, was a prerequisite for devotion

(pahla bhakti satsahg hai). The Ramcaritmdnas, too, emphasizes the importance of

keeping good company, as in the following caupal spoken by Ram: bhakti sutamtra

sakala sukha khani, binu satasahga na pdvahim pran("Devotion stands alone as a mine

of all prosperity, but men cannot obtain it without the fellowship of the virtuous").225 The

cornerstone of satsahg is regular attendance at Ramayana recital. The very act of being

present and coming together as a unified group holds inherent benefits for the

participants, much like the simple gesture of repeating Ram's name. The fundamental

importance of satsahg (as well as its inherent vulnerability) becomes most apparent

during its transgression: disputes within mandalis over details of ritual practice, including

musical performance and exegesis, over interpersonal conflicts, including financial

mismanagement or personal slander, or between internal factions, such as older and

younger members, are not uncommon. Following a conflict resolution pattern of mutual

avoidance (Brenneis 1979: 51), the aggrieved faction may split off and form its own

224I cite these definitions from The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary. They reflect local meaning and

usage (McGregor 1993: 976).225

This caupai appears prior to Doha 45 of Uttar-kand in the Gita Press edition (Tulsidas 2001: 1000).This is my translation.

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mandali, thus preserving or recreating satsang, the harmonious association with the

"good."226

With intra-mandali accord a prerequisite for efficacious devotional practice, we

might ask just who is included in and excluded from the company of "the virtuous or the

good," particularly in regard to gender and subethnicity. Although women regularly

attend the Ramayana recitals conducted by their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers,

their role in the constitution and maintenance of satsahg is indirect because access is

predicated on gender. The satsahg of the mandali is, more precisely, a sense of raternity

cultivated week after week though the bonds of male relationships, a hallowed sense of

camaraderie dating back to the days of jahaji bhai (ship-brothers). Beyond regular

worship, satsahg develops in the informal, gender-segregated space that follows the

recital in which men sing kirtans, discuss religion (among other topics), and socialize.

Yet very few devotees, male or female, would describe this arrangement as exclusionary

towards women, for the entire community is believed to benefit from the Ramayana

recital in which the women do take part as devotees. Furthermore, women tend to form

their own devotional groups, generally called mahila mandals, nari sabhas, or kirtan

clubs, creating spaces in which female relationships and initiatives generate their own

satsahg. Although these groups engage in activities similar to the all-male Ramayan

226The concept of satsahg is closely related to the termprembhdv, a local psychological-aesthetic conceptidentified by Donald Brenneis. In his analysis,prembhdv "carries the multidimensional meaning of asituation of interpersonal amity, the display of the mutually respectful and amiable demeanor whichembodies this amity and the experience of that state" (1985: 405). Prembhdv is, therefore, the "glue" thatbinds the mandali's satsahg, and just as satsahg engenders the experience of bhakti, prembhdv enables thetransmission of religious didacticism.

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mandalis, they tend to be less formally organized and far fewer in number.227 Women's

groups, whether singing kirtans or conducting their own Ramayana recitals, typically

meet during the daylight hours of Friday or Sunday, scheduling their activities around

their domestic duties and, in some cases, their own work commitments.

The segregation of women's and men's musical activities further intersects with a

gender ideology inherited from India that relegates women's performance activities to the

domestic realm and men's performance activities to the public realm.228 This division is

most apparent in large-scale public performances such as Ramlila and terukkuttu

productions that, as noted, employ all-male troupes of actors, dancers, and musicians. By

contrast, female singers tend to perform the women's repertoire of North Indian life-cycle

songs, still common—although not widespread—in Fiji to accompany domestic ritual

events dominated by women. For example, on the sixth day following a birth, a group of

women may gather to sing sohar (auspicious childbirth songs) in the home of the new

mother. Similarly, during certain stages of a wedding—particularly the telwaan and

bhatwaan when female kin massage the bride's skin with turmeric and oil and fry the rice

(lava) that will be used in the marriage ceremony—female singing clubs or specialists

227For example, the 1997 newsletter of the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha district branch of Rewa lists only five

registered women's groups compared with seventy-six registered male Ramayan mandalis (Prasad 1997:

228The folklorist A.K. Ramanujan posits this association as indigenous (although in no way exclusive) to

India through his study of Kannada folk traditions. Specifically, he identifies the terms akam and puram—common to several Dravidian languages—meaning "interior" and "exterior" respectively. He notes that,while women's folklore tends to fall within the akam/domestic sphere and men's within the puram/publicsphere, many practices will follow a continuum between the two poles (1986: 44).

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perform a repertoire of lok geet (lok git, "folksongs") or vivdh git ("marriage songs").

Women's groups, such as mahila mandals, occasionally meet for all-female Ramayan

Sammelans, although the gender exclusivity of these ensembles tempers the "public"

nature of their performance, even though men comprise a section of the audience. As

voiced to me, male concerns over female performance in the public realm center on the

impropriety of a woman subjecting herself to the male gaze, particularly if she is married

and particularly in a mixed-sex performance context. A few Ramayan mandalis self-

consciously challenge these conventions, however, by including women as fulltime,

active members of their otherwise all-male ensembles. The pracharak of one of these

"mixed mandalis" in Lautoka described this innovation proudly in terms of "equal

rights." His mandali included a female mantri (Secretary) and regularly featured female

readers of the arth (see Figure 22).

In terms of subethnicity, the satsang of a Ramayan mandali carries the potential to

both reinforce and challenge communal identities based on North Indian and South

Indian heritage. As discussed earlier, the minority "South Indian" population—today

roughly 25 percent of the Indo-Fijian population—exhibits a history of assimilation into

(and contribution towards) the North Indian-derived cultural mainstream, tempered by

successful South Indian cultural revival movements spearheaded by organizations like

229

Hindu weddings in Fiji, in most cases, last for three consecutive days: the telwaan, bhatwaan, andshaadi, to use local spellings. The evening of the bhatwaan, which features a large feast, may also be calledpritibhoj (priti-bhoj,"banquet"). Note that the term vivdh git is cognate with bydh ke git, the Indo-Trinidadian wedding songs documented and analyzed by Helen Myers (1998: 155).

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Figure 22: Ramayan mandali, mixed gender. The Shri Satsang Ramayan Kirtan Mandali performs withmixed male and female devotees. Lautoka, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

Sangam.230 Fiji Hindi has been the primary language of South Indians for generations,

although Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Telugu retain a symbolic value.

Intermarriage between Indo-Fijians of North Indian and South Indian heritage, rare

during the indenture period, is today relatively common. Still, regional differentiation

persists today in the labels employed for individuals in everyday speech. For example, in

Fiji Hindi, the most common term applied to an individual of South Indian heritage is

madrdsi (i.e. "from Madras"), whereas a North Indian Sanatani will typically be called

Hindustani, meaning "Indian." This collapsing of the majority with the totality is even

There is no official census of the Indo-Fijian population in terms of regional heritage, and it is difficultto estimate the current percentage of Indo-Fijians who claim South Indian heritage. Mayer estimated thatthe population split in 1951 mirrored the original proportion of South Indian laborers—that is, 25 percent ofthe total—and this observation appears to hold true for today (1961: 145; see also Mugler and Lal 1999:14-15).231

A survey conducted by France Mugler in 1993 of nearly 500 Indo-Fijians of South Indian heritagerevealed that Tamil was used in the homes of 32.4 percent of the respondents but that this usage waslargely restricted to the very oldest generations. In terms of education, there were twenty schools teachingTamil to approximately 2,000 students in 1997 (Mugler and Lal 1999:18,24).

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more explicit when the language spoken is English. I had the following exchange with an

Indo-Fijian man, who turned out to be of North Indian heritage:

KCM: "Are you South Indian?"Man: "No, just Indian."

Perceptions of difference regarding musical practice between Indo-Fijians of

North Indian and South Indian heritage tend to correlate with the repertoire and

instruments used by the latter group in goddess-worship rituals and marriage rites. The

iconic South Indian ensemble in Fiji consists of sehnai (double-reed aerophone), sur

(drone aerophone), and dhappala (frame drum). This ensemble is essential to Shakta

rituals such as firewalking, and the sehnai-sur combo (accompanied by dholak rather

than dhappala) performs instrumental versions of Hindi film songs at South Indian

weddings.232 In some cases, musicians may borrow the musical style of another subethnic

group for a particular purpose or effect. For example, a dholakiyd of North Indian

heritage showed me how he employs a "South Indian rhythm," normally used in

terukkuttu, to accompany the nacaniyd dance sequences during Ramlila.

Indo-Fijian Hindus of South Indian descent, due to their minority status within the

larger domain of North Indian hegemony, enjoy dual access to the Ram-bhakti practices

of Sanatanis (centered on the Rdmcaritmdnas) and the Devi-bhakti practices of South

232

Curiously, sehnai and dhappala are North Indian names—here in their local spellings—of the double-reed aerophone and frame drum which are both pan-Indian instruments. It appears that, through acombination of North Indian hegemony and simple availability, the sahndi and daphald, commonprocessional instruments in Uttar Pradesh, came to replace their South Indian counterparts, the ndyanam(double-reed aerophone) and tappattai (frame drum) in Indo-Fijian Shakta rituals.

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Indian pujdrls (centered on "miraculous" acts of devotion such as firewalking and divine

possession). Occupying a kind of "third space" between the communal poles represented

by the S.S.D. Pratinidhi Sabha and the T.I.S.I. Sangam, many Hindus of South Indian

descent in Fiji move freely between the realms of "North Indian" and "South Indian"

religious/musical practices, choosing to engage those that prove to be efficacious or

demonstrate viable authenticity. For example, my dholak teacher, Surya Prakash, a Hindu

of South Indian heritage, sat with a Ramayan mandali every week and claimed to

fraternize primarily with "North Indians," but he still held an annual South Indian rite at

his home for Kali that involved the sacrifice of three roosters.

The ritual mobility demonstrated by devotees of South Indian heritage has a

varying influence on the notion of subethnic identity vis-a-vis the constitution of

"community." Several Ramayan mandalis that I sat with in Lautoka were exclusively

"South Indian" in membership, thus recreating the socio-religious rural enclave in the

urban neighborhood. The particular mandalis that I met had registered with the S.S.D.

Pratinidhi Sabha but also maintained a close relationship with the Sangam organization

and the local South Indian temple. In terms of ritual sequence and musical style, the

Ramayana recital of South Indian mandalis is identical to that of the Sanatani "standard"

described above.234 On the other hand, an increasing number of Ramayan mandalis in

Lautoka include devotees of both North Indian and South Indian heritage. These groups

233Of course, Indo-Fijians of North Indian heritage may also benefit through participation in rites

associated with South Indian culture such as firewalking, but movement in this direction lacks the force ofnumbers demonstrated by "South Indian" participation in Ram-bhakti practices.

In one possible exception, a "South Indian" mandali included a Durga kirtan towards the end of theirrecital, which the pracharak explained to me this way: "Without the Mata's [Mother's] blessing, you can'tdo anything."

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transcend subethnicity as a criterion for membership in the larger Sanatani community

and represent micro-communities based on residential proximity, extended family ties,

and occupational affiliation. In these mandalis, the fraternity of satsahg extends to all

members regardless of their regional background. As one mandali member of North

Indian heritage told me regarding the mixed membership of his mandali, "Whoever

believes in Ram, they are the members of our mandali."

Music, Hinduism, and Islam: Tambura Bhajan and Qawali

Continuing with the interrelated themes of this chapter—musical performance,

concepts of subethnicity, community formation, and the discourse over the "viable

authenticity" of local musical practices—this section turns to the soloist's art in local

vocal music, best represented by two genres: "tambura bhajan" and "qawali." Both

genres claim local performance histories stretching back to the first decades of Fiji's

indenture era. Both demonstrate a marked influence from the music of the Hindi film

industry, which operates in tension with the genres' North Indian folk origins on the one

hand and the semiclassical modeling of their contemporary subcontinental namesakes on

the other. Both tambura bhajan and qawali are integral to Indo-Fijian life-cycle events—

respectively, funerals and weddings—in addition to newer contexts such as popular stage

competitions. As a final point, tambura bhajan is a definitively Hindu genre, whereas

qawali is associated with Islam, but Hindu singers dominate the performance of both

repertoires.

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As documented in chapter 4, the spirit of cooperation and mutual participation

that characterized the religious lives of Hindus and Muslims during the indenture period

ultimately gave way to religious sectarianism and institutionalism in the 1920s under the

reforms of the Sunni-dominated Fiji Muslim League and the (then-influential) Arya

Samaj Pratinidhi Sabha. Shadowing the "Hindu efflorescence" of the early 1970s

(described in chapter 5), Muslim leadership in Fiji ushered in a second period of cultural

conservation characterized, in the words of religion scholar Jan Ali, by the "de-

Indianization" or "Muslimization" of "ethnic Muslims" (2004: 152). This period saw an

increase in Muslim education abroad, a high number of visiting maulvis (Islamist

teachers), a change in local Muslim dress (including the adoption of hijjab, women's

head scarf), and the advent of organized pilgrimage to Mecca. Today, Muslims account

for roughly 16 percent of the Indo-Fijian population (7 percent of the total population),

and relations with the Hindu majority are generally tolerant and civil. As discussed

below, local qawali performance by Hindu specialists, perhaps the final echo of an earlier

history of cultural and musical cross-pollination, generates an elucidating discourse on

music, religion, and representation in contemporary Fiji.

235Although relations are amiable, Hindus and Muslims generally maintain a distinct sense of communityidentity that, again, is detectable at the level of ethnic labeling: "North Indian" Sanatanis are called"Indian" (Hindustani) while Indo-Fijian Muslims are called "Muslim" (musalmdri). Each group remainsquietly critical of the other's religious practices. The travel writer Linda Gil quotes a Muslim womandiscussing Hindus: "They do not believe in god, not the real god. They believe in stones ... andphotographs!" (1986: 83). I tended to hear the reverse perspective; more than one of my Hindu fieldconsultants suggested to me that the Black Stone of the Ka'bah that Muslims worshipped in Mecca wasactually a Shiva lingam. Source for population statistics above: Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Populationby Religion and by Race-1996 Census of Population," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj/Social/religionstats.htm.

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Field consultants identified the tambura bhajan as an "old, girmitiya style of

singing" that employs a distinctive "local tune" to deliver bhakti texts that derive from

India. The most conspicuous feature of the tambura bhajan is that it is sung by a soloist

(i.e., no responsorial chorus) accompanied by the typical instrumentation of a mandali:

harmonium, dholak, dahda tal, and several idiophones, including jhdnjh (or manjlra),

kdrtal, and tambourine. In response to my question regarding just what distinguished the

tambura bhajan from other forms of devotional singing, most singers and devotees

suggested that the answer was self-evident: "Well, there should be a tamburd there."

Indeed, the genre derives its name from the tamburd, which in Fiji is a long-necked,

unfretted, plucked drone lute of the folk variety better known in India as ektar. Crafted

from a hollowed gourd (loki) or coconut and sealed with goatskin, the tamburd features a

single string (or single chorus of two strings) tuned to the tonic pitch, stretching the

length of the neck (averaging forty inches/100 centimeters). In the traditional

performance posture, the singer (called a bhajniya) sits with the tamburd held in a

vertical position while playing a pair of kdrtal with the other hand (see Figure 23). In

contemporary tambura bhajan performance, however, the singer typically accompanies

himself on the harmonium. The tamburd may still be present, but it is almost entirely

inaudible under the din of the ensemble. Clearly, the tamburd, as an emblem of the genre,

retains a significant symbolic role in the ensemble, a visual, if not sonic, link to the

genre's girmitiya roots. The most common performance context for tambura bhajan, as

Totaram Sanadhya describes bhajan singing accompanied by a tambura (or "one-wire") in the "coolie

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elaborated below, occurs during the thirteen days of mourning (sixteen for South Indians)

that follow the death of a Hindu man or woman. Tambura bhajans may also be

performed during the informal singing that follows Ramayana recitals and other pujas,

although kirtans (kirtari) are more common in this context.238 Although similar in their

Figure 23: Shalendra Kumar plays the tambura. He sits in the typical performance posture for tamburabhajan. Lautoka, Fiji, 2005. Photo by K. Miller.

lines" circa 1893. See quote in chapter 3.Sanadhya also recorded that during indenture days "in some places, people read religious books and

sing bhajan during the mourning period" (Lal and Yadav 1995: 108). Each night of the thirteen or sixteenday mourning period is marked by recitation of the Bhagavad Gita (called Gltapath), and the singing oftambura bhajans follows. While discussing tambura bhajan, field consultants made frequent references tothe funerary singing of the Kabir Panthi sect, which arrived in Fiji during the indenture period. At thefuneral service of a member, Kabir Panthis sing cauB bhajans, so-named for caukd, a term referring toboth the name of the ceremony and the square-shaped ritual space where it takes place. CauB bhajan mayalso be called kanjari bhajan due to the prominence of the kanjari, a small frame drum, in the ensemble.Unlike tambura bhajan, the cauB bhajan is responsorial.

With reference to the preceding footnote (note 61), some field consultants referred to post-recitaldevotional singing sessions as cauB bhajan. In this case, however, the reference was not to the KabirPanthi ritual, but to a kitchen implement. In Fiji, a cauB is a round wooden board used for rolling rotls (flatbread). In this analogy, the singing group forms a circle (like the shape of the cauki) and each membertakes his or her turn leading a kirtan or singing a bhajan.

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devotional texts, my field consultants consistently distinguished between bhajans and

kirtans based on performance style: the bhajan is strictly a soloist's art, whereas the kirtan

features a lead singer with a responsorial chorus.239 Furthermore, kirtan performance is

open to both male and female singers, whereas the tambura bhajan is generally the

province of male performers alone.

The genre loosely known as "qawali" in Fiji (the local spelling of qawwali or

kavvalirepresents the "local folk music" par excellence, having emerged from the 1940s

as the music of choice for entertainment at the weddings and other gatherings of Hindus

and Muslims alike. According to Mohammed Akief, the Managing Director of the Fiji-

based recording company Procera Music, "At one time in Fiji, back in the 50s and 60s, at

any wedding or in their homes, nobody sang bhajan or kirtan—they'd come and sing

qawali." The qawali that developed in Fiji had no direct connection with the mystical

Sufi (Muslim) tradition associated with the thirteenth-century poet-musician Amir

Khusrau, as there were very few members of this order among the girmitiyas.

Nevertheless, laborers would likely have been familiar with the traditional version of

qawwali that spread to weddings and festivals in eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar.

Still, it appears that performance in Fiji owes much to the style of qawwali that appeared

in early Hindi films from 1931 onward. As described by Peter Manuel, "Film qawwalis

generally employed more Western instruments, less improvisation, and were more often

romantic than mystical" (1993: 124). In India, the popularity of film qawwalis gave rise

239Slawek aptly describes the discourse in India over the various meanings of "bhajan" and "kirtan" and

the relationship between the two. One of his interlocutors situated in Banaras, Uttar Pradesh, insists thatbhajan is a solo genre whereas kirtan is a congregational genre, although this likely refers to the "stagebhajan," a twentieth-century development (1996: 59).

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to a new stage tradition and niche market in the recording industry that promoted

devotional Urdu texts, introduced more varied melodic material, and emphasized the solo

singer over the ensemble.

In a "parallel evolution," influenced by the consumption of these films and

recordings, qawali in Fiji—much like the tambura bhajan—developed into a soloist's art

supported by the core ensemble of harmonium, dholak, dahda tdl, and jhanjh. For

example, Shiu Balak, who would become known as the "Fiji Qawal," cut his teeth on the

recordings of Ismail Azad, a famous proponent of the mid-centuryfilmi style qawwali

(Jamnadas 1980: 19).240 It is more accurate to speak of qawali in Fiji as a style rather than

a genre—what Donald Brenneis identifies as kavvali rasta, "qawwali style" (1983: 63).

Largely divorced from its association with Islam, qawali style entered the Hindu

repertoire in the form of "bhajan qawali"—a devotional, didactic song form in qawali

style based on Hindu texts—and "Fiji qawali"—a topical song form in qawali style

employing secular texts; both forms are discussed at length by Brenneis (1983 and 1985).

Following the conservative shift in Indo-Fijian Muslim society during the 1970s,

however, an increased exposure to recordings of "traditional" Sufi qawwali from

Pakistan, and the gradual distinction and specialization of bhajan and qawali performers

in Fiji's local cassette industry, qawali in Fiji experienced a degree of "Muslimization."

During my fieldwork, most consultants associated qawali with Islam, but still

240

Brenneis notes that the birahd genre may have constituted another stylistic precedent for qawali style inFiji: "The birha of rural eastern Uttar Pradesh ... appears to prefigure both the solo performance style andnarrative focus of Fiji kavvali more than do Indian kavvdli (1983: 70). The birahd, as a subcaste genre, isstill known by a few singers in Fiji (see chapter 5).

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distinguished between three types: "Islamic qawali" (sometimes called "mazhabi qawali,"

the Urdu word for "religious"), "bhajan qawali" (or "dharmik qawali," the Hindi/Sanskrit

word for "religious"), and "Fiji qawali," which retains its meaning as a topical song

format. As discussed below, the majority of qawali performers (known as qawdls) of all

three types identify as Hindu.241

Since at least the 1930s, the performance of tambura bhajan and qawali at

funerals, weddings, and other gatherings has typically involved an element of

competition as two singers, each with his own mandali, address each other and the

gathered audience through alternating turns behind the harmonium. In the case of

funerary singing during the somber mourning period following a death the competitive

structure is, naturally, not explicit, but each bhajaniyd will be expected to follow the

other with an appropriate verse. The atmosphere of weddings, however, affords qawdls

greater license to challenge each other's religious knowledge and performance

capabilities in a playful manner that occasionally borders on personal attack. The vocal

duels of bhajaniyds and qawdls in their respective life-cycle ritual contexts gave rise to

competitive stage shows generally called pratiyogitd (in Hindi via Sanskrit) or muqdbld

(in Urdu via Arabic), both meaning "competition" or "rivalry." Featuring two reputable

singers and their ensembles, these contests are typically fundraising events—frequently

241The clear majority of qawdls that I met, heard, or heard about during my fieldwork were Hindu. A

survey of qawali recordings in the catalogue of South Pacific Recordings (SPR), a Fiji-based music label,shows 56 percent of singers with Hindu surnames and 44 percent with Muslim surnames. As an historicalaside, Edward O. Henry notes that both Muslims and lower caste Hindus performed what he terms "popularqawwali" in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the area from which most Indo-Fijians derive, but his field consultantsclaim that prior to the 1940s only Muslims performed qawwali (1988: 214).

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organized by Ramayan mandalis—with catchy titles such as "Hot Qawali Muqabla" and

"Grand Bhajan Nite."242 In an urban setting such as Lautoka, stage competitions draw

huge crowds of men. Despite the religious foundation of the event, most people find the

challenges and insults hurled between the singers inappropriate for women.

These stage shows are heir to the "challenge song" contests described by Brenneis

and Ram Padarath (1979) with one crucial development: rather than contests between

rival factions or religious groups, such as Hindus and Muslims, the song competitions of

today feature proponents (if not always followers) of the same faith debating the details

and merits of sacred texts. For example, one might hear in qawali muqabla a Muslim and

a Hindu exchanging praise for the Quran or, perhaps more surprising, two Hindu qawals

singing of the glorious deeds of Muhammad. In the end, both singers receive a trophy,

a leveling gesture reflective of the Indo-Fijian sensitivity to individual success and fears

of jealousy.

Whether in the context of funerals, weddings, or formal stage competitions, the

performance of tambura bhajan and qawali follows a specific thematic sequence. For

twelve evenings following a death in a Sanatani household, bhajan mandalis will gather

242Although most competitions feature two performers, a recent trend called "three corner bhajan" pits

three singers against each other. Tambura bhajan and qawali are not the only local folk genres to appear incompetitive stage shows; kirtan and lok geet competitions are relatively common, and the latter may featurefemale soloists.243

As Manuel observes, the formal competition format has North Indian precedents, including duels(called dangal or muqdbila) in the lavni, kajri, rasiya, and biraha traditions. In the Caribbean, the SouthAsian predilection towards competitive performance contexts collapsed, to some degree, with theTrinidadian format of calypso contests, and a practice of "local-classical music" competitions arose withvocal sparring inspired by picong, ridiculing verses (Manuel 2000: 50-51). According to Melveen Jackson,the muqdbld stage show developed as an important context for qawwali in South Africa, another formerlabor colony (1991: 182).

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to sing tambura bhajans, often late into the night. Each group puts forward its best singer,

and the two bhajaniyas alternate through the following themes: 1) guru-sdra: in praise of

one's spiritual/musical teacher; 2) brahm-vistdr: on the subject of the nirguna (formless)

godhead; 3) hahs-sara: regarding the "soul" or "migratory spirit"; 4) piya-sara: on the

topic of male-female relationships; and 5) kdyd-vistar : on the relationship between the

corporeal and the spiritual. Through the exploration of these topics, which draw heavily

from medieval nirguna bhakti poets such as Kabir, the bhajaniyds accompany the

transmigration of the deceased and attempt to comfort those he or she has left behind. By

contrast, the tambura bhajans of the stage show tend to emphasize saguna (god with

attributes) bhakti texts including the Hindu Puranic and epic literature and the medieval

poems of Surdas, Mirabai, Tulsidas, and others.

The singers typically cover anywhere from one to five themes either arranged in

advance or drawn at random during the course of a single competition.244 The themes,

called vistdr (sometimes bistdr), meaning an "expansion" or "development," may be

based on a particular text such as the Ramayana or Mahabharata, a particular deity such

as Ram, Krishna, Shiva, or Devi, or a particular topic such as srsti mend, the "creation of

the universe." The evaluation of the bhajaniyds, offered by formal judges and the

audience at large, focuses on each singer's style of presentation, musical skill, and

command of religious knowledge with a particular emphasis on his ability to select an

244

As a typical example, one bhajan competition that I attended near Nadi lasted eleven "rounds" for atotal of twenty-two tambura bhajans over the course of six and a half hours.

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appropriate tambura bhajan that comments on the preceding bhajan or moves the story

forward from a given point.245 Through successful appearances on the bhajan competition

circuit—which typically leads to a recording in the local cassette/compact disc industry

or an appearance on local Hindi radio—an individual bhajaniya can acquire fame and

accrue a certain degree of religious authority, circumventing, like the lay pracharak, the

Brahman hold on Hindu didacticism. Although clearly a religious occasion, the tambura

bhajan competition lacks the ritual framing {mantra, drati, visarjan, etc.) of other

Sanatani events such as Ramayana recitation, Ram katha, and Ramlila. While devotion is

inherent to the bhaja format, the tambura bhajas of the stage show tend to emphasize

siksa, or religious "instruction," which the audience—nearly exclusively male—absorbs,

often with the zeal of connoisseurs.246

In the case of qawali performance, the context of the wedding—specifically the

Muslim wedding—requires a certain thematic sequence that is largely reproduced for

qawali stage competitions. Following a song of welcome and special songs for the bride

and groom, the performance sequence—in its ideal form—proceeds as follows: 1) hamd:

in praise of Allah (God); 2) na 't: in praise of Muhammad; 3) asiqana and ghazal:

regarding love or romance, often as a metaphor for religious devotion; 4) vdqayd or "Fiji

qawali": on a particular issue, topic, or event; 5)jahg: literally "battle," in praise of Ali,

245The evaluative criteria in terms of musical ability are similar to those described for Faag Sammelan in

chapter 6.246

This observation fits with Brenneis' analysis of bhajan qawali in rural Vanua Levu, which, he notes,holds religious and moral instruction as a principal goal (1983: 66). I would still argue, however, thatBrenneis' conclusion—that there is "an increased stress on moral behavior and character rather than ondevotion in Fiji Indian Hinduism" (ibid.)—reflects the atypical influence of the Arya Samaj in the villagehe studied and does not necessarily represent the character of Hindu practices in Fiji at large.

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the son-in-law of Muhammad; 6) sahidi. on the martyrdom of Hassan and Hussain, Ali's

sons; and 7) a song of farewell. In certain respects, this sequence mirrors the Sufi mahfi-

e-samd ("listening gathering")—particularly the inclusion of the poetic genres hamd,

na 't, and sahldl (more typically called manqabat)—although hamd and na 't also have

their place in milad recitation for Muhammad's birthday in the orthodox practices of

subcontinental Sunni Muslims (Qureshi 1972: 20-21. The contemporary sequence and

repertoire of qawali at Muslim weddings and stage shows in Fiji appears to reflect a

compromise between the authoritative reach of conservative Indo-Fijian Sunni

leadership—which holds music as anathema to Islam but considers poetry a high form of

praise—and the persistent popularity of qawali as an entertainment genre with a locally

sanctioned history and significance. As discussed below, the ambivalence that some

Muslims feel towards qawali springs in part from the fact that Hindu performers

dominate the field.

The musical structure of both tambura bhajan and qawali style, like virtually

every genre of local folk music, reveals a considerable influence from and interaction

with the music of Bollywood, the contemporary Hindi film industry. Beyond the practice

of incorporating phrases or refrains from the semiclassical or "pop bhajan" repertoire of

the Indian music industry, complete with original music and lyrics, tambura bhajan and

qawali style tend to utilize musical parody, the setting of a text to a melody borrowed

from another source, as we heard in the songs of Ram katha and the barns of Ramayana

recital. This practice appears to follow developments in South Asia where tune

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borrowing, according to Manuel, "is one of the most conspicuous and controversial

characteristics of popular and folk music in India today" (1993: 131). In Fiji, the

performance of film songs in cover versions has been widespread since the arrival of the

earliest sound films, but the adaptation of filmi melodies for local folk and devotional

music appears to be a more recent phenomenon, dating to the 1970s or 1980s.247 Local

songs with text set to filmi melodies are distinguished by the English word "latest," as in

the phrase "Latest Qawali Muqabla." Shalen, a music store owner in Lautoka, explained

it this way: "The 'latest' simply means the latest tunes with fast, fast music. In qawali

programs, after three or four qawalis young people will demand the 'latest.' Sometimes

they'll start yelling: 'Latest!' 'Latest!'" Indeed, the use of the latest filmi tunes in local

folk music holds a special appeal for members of the younger generation who continue to

show a strong interest in local genres, especially kirtan and qawali. A section of "latest

qawalis" now usually follows the dsiqdnd and ghazal in stage shows, and "junior" qawals

often hold entire competitions dedicated to the "latest" repertoire. Seasoned bhajaniyas

and qawdls must be prepared to sing the "latest" in some performance contexts and the

"old style" in others.

The following analysis of a "latest tambura bhajan" recorded during my fieldwork

serves to illustrate the manner in which a musician incorporates Hindi film melodies into

a pre-existing "local folk" genre without displacing the latter's structural integrity and

formal identity. As Scott Marcus points out, the parody of film music in the Indian folk

247Some field consultants cited particular singers as innovators of this phenomenon. For example, one

music store owner told me that a local singer named Subramani had been the first to sing qawali with filmitunes during his heyday in the 1980s.

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repertoire usually takes one of two forms: 1) an entire song based on a single film

melody, or 2) one or more film melodies incorporated as sectional mid-song substitutions

(1993: 103). In Fiji, the more pliable local genres such as lok geet, kirtan, and certain

types of qawali fall into the former category, and many examples of these genres could be

described as film songs rendered with new texts.248 The tambura bhajan, however, falls

into the latter category; in this case, the film melodies must conform to fit a tambura

bhajan template established through decades of local performance practice. My example,

"Bhole tero hai mahima nyaari ("Shiva, thy glory is like none other"), utilizes the

melodies of no fewer than three separate film songs. The bhajaniyd, in this case, is a

young boy named Arjun Sami who was nine years old when I made the recording. He

was something of a prodigy in Lautoka and occasionally attracted the attention of local

news media. This tambura bhajan was arranged by Arjun's father, Sunil Sadhu, and his

"guru," an accomplished bhajaniyd named Satendra Kumar. The piece is a saguna

tambura bhajan on Shiva of the type typically performed in competitions or following

pujas, although I recorded it in the context of a rehearsal for Arjun's first compact disc,

subsequently released in July 2006.249 When speaking in English, field consultants tended

to describe tambura bhajan style as "high" (in terms of pitch) and "fast" (in terms of

tempo), especially if the comparative standard—implied or direct—was the semiclassical

248For example, during the course of my fieldwork I heard kirtans performed on the following film songs(among many others): "Dafli Wale Dafli Baja" from Sargam (1979), "Kitna pyaara tujhe rob ne banaya"from Raja Hindustani (1996), "Just Chill" from Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya (2005), "Kajra re" from Bunty aurBubli (2005), and the title song of Nirhua Satal Rahe (2006). This last example is actually from thegrowing Bhojpuri language film industry (see chapter 9).

249Arjun Pawan, Bhakti Tambura Bhajans Presented by Arjun Pawan, Procera Music compact disc APCD2692. The text on the CD cover advertises, "All saakhi's in most latest filmi tunes."

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bhajan style heard in popular recordings by India-based singers like Anup Jalota and

Anuradha Paudwal.

In his performance, Arjun approximates the vocal style of adult bhajaniyds,

delivering the text in a high tessitura with a nasalized timbre as his father accompanies

him in the upper register of the harmonium. Although it was not present in Arjun's

ensemble, many bhajan mandalis include a medolin (a narrow board zither that uses

typewriter-like keys to stop the strings), which provides a heterophonic double of the

harmonium melody.250 Like most tambura bhajans, Arjun's performance employs an

eight-beat rhythm with a 4/4 feel, sometimes called kaherva, that proceeds at a moderate

tempo, called teka or jhulao ("swing-like movement"). Only towards the close of the

song does the tempo increase to the moderately fast pace called caltd. In terms of song

structure, the tambura bhajan begins with a brief instrumental section that, in this case, is

based on a Hindi film melody (see Form Diagram in Figure 24, which includes an

overview of the song structure and information on the sources of borrowed melodies). At

the close of the instrumental introduction, the harmonium shifts to the tonic, the dholak

and idiophones settle into an unobtrusive pattern, and Arjun sings a brief vocalise,

generally called dldp or rag. Unlike its classical counterpart, the alap of the tambura

250In northern India, this instrument is called the benjo or bulbultarang and accompanies a range of music

including qawwali (Jairazbhoy 1988: 44). In Fiji, the medolin (actually pronounced "mendolin") may alsobe called a "banjo" or "mandolin." A handful of musicians in Fiji also play the Western-style mandolin,which appears to have loaned its name to the zither.

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bhajan consists of a brief vocal statement, usually a single, stepwise ascent from the tonic

to the major third.251

As the final note of the dldp trails off, the harmonium introduces a second film

tune that will serve as the melodic base of the first sdkhl. Similar to the dohd poetic

meter, the sdkhl is an end-rhyming couplet associated with the nirguna bhakti poets,

particularly Kabir. Sunill and Satendra have selected two sakhls appropriate to the

Shiva theme of the tambura bhajan. The source of the first is unclear, whereas the second

is attributed to Kabir. In this example, Arjun sings the first sdkhl text straight through

1) Opening instrumental section. Features a melody from "Mere Aangne Mein" from the film Laawaris(1981), staring Amitabh Bachchan; music by Kalyanji Anandji.

2) Alap. A brief, stepwise ascension of a major third.3) First sakhl. A couplet featuring a melody from "Hum safar mere hum safar" from the film Purnima

(1965), featuring Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh; music also by Kalyanji Anandji.4) Second sakhl. Features a melody from "Bindas" from the film Krishna Cottage (2004), featuring

Shaan and Sunidhi Chauhan; music by Anu Malik. See Musical Example 11.5) Musical transition. A brief, melodic line higher in pitch than the preceding melody, which signals a

statement from the dholakiya that temporarily retards the rhythm and forms a transition to the nextsection. See Musical Example 12.

6) Four verses. Each features the repeating refrain (tek): "Bhole tero hai mahima nyaari."

Figure 24: Tambura bhajan form diagram

with no repetition, but for the second—utilizing a third film tune—he breaks up the lines

of the couplet, singing each in an A-A-B form (see Musical Example 11 for a

transcription of the melody used in the second sdkhl).

251The terms dldp and rag in this context may be borrowings based on a limited knowledge of NorthIndian classical music. In the latter, the dldp is a (sometimes lengthy) exposition of the rag. In the tamburabhajan, the dldp accomplishes little more than clearing the singer's throat.252

One of the three main sections of Kabir's Bijak is a collection of sakhis, which includes some of hismost aphoristic and widely known poetry (Hess and Singh 2002: xiii).

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muslim mem raddo badal haf ("These Hindus and Muslims are in constant tumult"), is

one of Dhirendra's own compositions. He had written several topical qawalis, including

one about the 2006 Fiji national election. Dhirendra, who was in his mid forties,

demonstrated a taste for semiclassical ghazals and "refined" qawwalis of the Indian and

Pakistani recording industries and tended to model his compositions on these precedents.

As his dholakiyd put it, "We try to come near to that music."

Due to the spectrum of folk, filmi, and semi-classical influences on qawali in Fiji,

it is difficult to generalize about qawali style in terms of musical structure and

characteristics. Broadly speaking, qawali performance begins with a brief instrumental

section followed by an alap-like vocalization, which is typically more elaborate than its

counterpart in the tambura bhajan. The qawdli will usually sing the opening verse over a

terse harmonium accompaniment, joined by the dholak and idiophones with its first

iteration. During stage competitions, the qawdl may interject half-sung couplets

(generally called ser) into his (or her) composition. These ser may derive from Urdu

poetry, but they are just as frequently improvised challenges directed at the opposing

qawdl. Rhythmically, most qawalis follow kaherva (eight-beat meter) or dddrd (six-beat

meter), and tempos tend to alternate sectionally between calta and tekd.

Dhirendra's Fiji qawali demonstrates only a few of these musical characteristics:

it employs the kaherva meter at a relatively consistent brisk tempo throughout (about 120

M.M.), lacks an alap section, and follows a strophic structure of couplets-bridge-refrain.

However, my primary interest in this example is its text, which describes the various

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practices of Hindus and Muslims and points out their similarities and shared goals. The

refrain, for example, is meant to be ironic; it declares (in translation): "These Hindus and

Muslims are in constant tumult; that side draws holy water from the zamzam (holy well

of Mecca) and this side from the Ganges" (see full, annotated English translation in

Figure 25). As Dhirendra told me, "Both of them are doing the same thing, but with

different names. There's no difference between Hindus and Muslims." The comparison

of Hindu and Muslim traditions forms a relatively common theme in qawali

competitions, and a discourse elucidating the unity of these practices clearly serves to

legitimize the position of the Hindu qawdl in a genre increasingly associated with Islam.

As with many issues in Fiji, thediscourse over the viable authenticity of Hindu-

identified performers in a Muslim-oriented performance context shifts radically

depending on whom one asks. In general, interlocutors whether Hindu or Muslim express

a concern that qawali performance in Fiji suffers at the hands of its lesser executants. As

one (Hindu) radio programmer at a Hindi-language station told me, "There is only a

handful—two or three people—who sing the real, traditional qawali. Nowadays, you

have qawalis sung on a purely commercial basis; they have all sorts of nasty words

there." Although both Hindus and Muslims tend to situate this critique in terms of the

singer's ability or experience, only my Muslim field consultants correlated these

variables with the singer's religion. One Sunni Muslim who taught Urdu at a Lautoka-

based college offered the following opinion:

Many non-Muslims who are qawdls don't have any Islamic background;they don't have any Islamic knowledge. They don't know about the

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culture, they only know how to play music. And to stay in the picture andmake money, they learn a few Islamic songs. And most of the time thepronunciations are different, and the message they are giving to qawali istotally opposite to Islam.... So it's just to make money, to havecompetitions, and to swear at people in qawalis.

Of course, as an educated Urdu specialist, this consultant's perspective does not

necessarily represent the majority of Muslims in Fiji.

These Hindus and Muslims are in constant tumult:on this side they draw holy water from the zamzam,on that side from the Ganges253

This side believes that Sita was falsely accusedThat side believes that the Virgin Mary was falsely accused254

On this side, the tyrannical Ravan came to beOn that side, Abu Jahl was born255

This side cries out that Hanuman is powerfulThat side shouts that Ali is mighty

This side sacrifices a goat for godThat side discusses the Qur'an during Bakr'id

This side is stubborn, That side is stubborn,But their actions are the same:on this side they draw holy water from the zamzam,on that side from the Ganges

Figure 25: Fiji qawali: "Yahi hindu muslim mem raddo badal hai,"by Dhirendra Raj.

Hindu qawdls, in response to such criticism, emphasize the training, research, and

preparations required of them to meet the expectations of their largely Muslim audience.

253These are both sites of pilgrimage. For Muslims, drawing pure water from the zamzam well in Mecca is

a holy act; for Hindus, the Ganges is a holy river.254

Sita, of course, is the heroine of the Ramayana and was falsely accused by the people of Ayodhya (andRam himself) of having been unfaithful while in captivity (especially in Valmiki's original). The VirginMary (Mariam) is described in the Qur'an as being accused by others who doubt the virgin birth of Jesus.255

Here Ravan, the demon king of the Ramayana, is compared to Abu Jahl, a powerful threat to Islamduring the time of Muhammad.

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Dhirendra told me, "The Muslims like more that Indian [i.e. Hindu] qawdls sing qawalis,

because the Indian qawdls pronounce their words very fine." Again, in response to my

query regarding the "best" singers of Islamic qawali, most of my field consultants offered

the names of Hindu singers: Shiu Balak, Abhinash Dass, and Prahlad Lalla. This

phenomenon, it is important to note, does not appear true in the reverse direction, as I

heard of no Muslim-identified performer of the Hindu song repertoire.

So, as a final question, we might ask: how does performance of the Muslim song

repertoire affect the religious identities of Hindu-identified singers? During interviews,

Hindu qawdls tended to explain their commitment to Islamic qawali through recourse to

religious universalism of the type enumerated in Dhirendra's Fiji qawali: though they

carry different names, the paths to god are identical. I heard several statements similar to

the following, offered by a Hindu qawal in Lautoka:

For me, when I sing about Allah, I mean only god. For me, he's god; thesame god that I believe in. Just because it's qawali, I have to say Allah; Icannot say Ram. That's the only difference for me, otherwise it's allsinging about god and singing about the values and the virtues that theProphet Muhammad has taught.

For Hindu qawdls, singing Islamic qawali can be a genuine expression of their faith

congruous with their Hindu belief structure, even as the textual material provides a new

encounter with the ideology and value system of Islam. As a key point, it is performance

that allows for this oscillatory movement between religious spaces. Qawdls and many of

their listeners are drawn to this repertoire with the fervor of aficionados. As one qawdl

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put it: "We don't mind that we are Hindu, or that this fellow is Muslim; we go for it

because of the music—that's our love; music is our love."

"Local Folk Music " and Classicization: A Discourse

In this final section, I revisit various genres of Indo-Fijian music discussed in this

chapter and chapter 6 in reference to the subtle but persistent forces of "classicization"

particularly active in the urban context. Classicization, as defined here, involves the

identification of certain musical concepts, styles, repertoires, and instruments as

aesthetically and socially superior and the deployment of these musical forms as the ideal

benchmarks for performance in a given musical culture. In the case of Indo-Fijian

musical practices, North Indian "Hindustani" art music provides the ultimate, although

distant, model of the musical ideal, particularly through the simplified semiclassical style

prevalent in the transnational Indian film and music industries. We have already noted the

effects of classicization on several genres of "local folk music," including Pandit

Sharma's quotation of semiclassical bhajans during his Ram katha, Master Sailesh's

incorporation of "refined" Ramayana singing techniques gleaned from the performances

of international expounders, and Dhirendra's modeling of his own qawali style on the

semiclassical ghazal and Sufi qawwali of the Indian music industry. As discussed above,

the force of classicization is one of three variables in the discourse over viable

authenticity in the realm of Indo-Fijian musical performance, the other two being local

folk-based performance styles and the influential music of the Bollywood film industry.

In the context of this discourse—correlating, as it does, religious efficacy with the

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aesthetics of musical style—classicization is revealed as a project of Sanskritization.

Drawing from interviews with music instructors, influential singers, and "culture

brokers" in the Indo-Fijian community, this section identifies a series of "subject

positions" (Rice 2003) within this discourse as it examines the effect of classicization on

Indo-Fijian musical style and Hindu practice.256

Although underappreciated according to its few practitioners in Fiji, Indian

classical music enjoys an exalted, largely symbolic status in Indo-Fijian society out of

proportion with its actual popularity. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and

concurrent with the early days of indenture, India's emergent clerical and professional

middle class rebranded courtly Indian art music with the English word "classical" and

affixed Hindustani and Karnatak musics with the highest rank in the cultural project of

Indian nationalism (Moro 2004: 191). It was this same middle class that gave rise to the

Hindu reform movements discussed in chapter 4 such as the Arya Samaj, the

Ramakrishna Mission, and the revitalized Sanatan Dharm, which would have such a

profound impact on Hindu practices in Fiji. By the time Prime Minister Ratu Sir

Kamisese Mara inaugurated Fiji's first Indian Culture Centre in 1972 in partnership with

the government of India, the representative performing arts of Indian "national culture"

256I could find no evidence suggesting the existence of any locally distinctive classical music tradition inFiji continuous from the indenture period. In this regard, the life of classical Indian music in Fiji differsmarkedly from the "local-classical music" of the Caribbean identified by Manuel as "tan-singing." Owingperhaps to the deeper history of indenture in the Caribbean, local classical performance in places such asTrinidad produced idiosyncratic forms of familiar subgenres, including dhrupad, tillana, ghazal, and thumri.Tan-singing shares many of the same performance contexts as Indo-Fijian folk genres including weddings,religious functions, and competitions. In fact, Manuel adds that tan-singing resembles North Indian folkmusic more than Hindustani music in its "relatively limited modal and metrical repertoire, its restrictedamount of improvisation, and its orientation toward text rather than musical form" (2000: 13).

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were well established: Hindustani "classical" music based on rag and tal theory including

vocal, sarod, sitar, and tabla as well as the "classical" dance styles of kathak and bharata

ndtyam. At the inaugural ceremony Sir Ratu Mara declared, "We are a multi-racial

community and the more we can understand each other's cultures the more we will learn

to understand each other."257 And yet the "culture" representing Indo-Fijians in this

equation was explicitly subcontinental and "tunelessly" classical and largely bypassed the

local folk and devotional traditions that linked Indo-Fijians to the indenture period.

Therefore, at the time of Fiji's "Hindu efflorescence," the government-sponsored

institution representing Indo-Fijian culture employed visiting instructors from India who

taught exclusively classical Indian music and dance. By 2006, the Fiji Indian Culture

Centre had five locations around Fiji including Suva, Nadi, Ba, Labasa, and Savusavu.258

As Pierre Bourdieu (1984) suggests, classicization operates along a continuum of

socio-economic class positions with the power to determine "good taste" or "high art"

resting in the hands of those with the most (economic or symbolic) capital. In Fiji, class

differentiation within the Indo-Fijian population reflects the continued dominance of

export agriculture in the lives of the majority, sustaining a large working class amidst a

smaller commercial bourgeoisie and business class (Sutherland 1992: 54). Despite the

257This quote appears in "Indian Cultural Centre Prepares 'Girmit' Ballet," an article in the special Girmitcentenary issue of the Fiji Sun (Fiji Sun 1979: 96).

A minority of public voices in the Indo-Fijian community dissented from the view that the classicalculture of India should represent Indo-Fijian achievement during this period. For example, Pillai, an Indo-Fijian advocate of Fiji Hindi and local performance genres, observed the following during a 1978 addresson Radio Fiji: "Various cultural organizations are trying to promote ideals and modes of expression that areirrelevant in contemporary Fiji Indian society. How useful is it to advocate 'pure' Hindi when most of ouryoung people do not speak it, let alone read or write it? What is the point of teaching Bharata Natyam orKathak dancing? Our young people prefer disco and soul music, and they would much rather see a filmactress in a sexy cabaret dance. What chances does Indian classical music have in Fiji? Our youngstersprefer Manhattan Transfer, the Kinks, the Who, and the what not?" From transcript (Pillai 1978).

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emphasis placed on education and occupational advancement in the Indo-Fijian

community, there is an absence of a clearly defined middle class, as the top 20 percent of

the Indo-Fijian population earns over 50 percent of the community's national income.259

Class is further complicated in the Indo-Fijian community by the lack of access to land

ownership, the high rate of "brain drain" emigration, and the cultural distancing of

Sanatanis from the Gujarati minority that dominates the commercial bourgeoisie despite

the Hindu identification of both groups.260

Class ambiguities not withstanding, Bourdieu's basic premise—"that the

working-class 'aesthetic' is a dominated 'aesthetic' which is constantly obliged to define

itself in terms of the dominant aesthetics"—is worth considering (1984: 41). In the case

of local Indo-Fijian folk and devotional musics, such as Ramayana recitation or tambura

bhajan, the "dominant aesthetics" are those of Indian classical and semiclassical music,

but the economic base of this dominance is in many ways superseded by the salience of

classical music as a marker of a "high," "ancient" Indian culture and the related

perception that it is somehow more appropriate (or even more viable) in the context of

Hindu practice. For example, Vivek Nand, a respected Fiji-born music instructor at

Suva's Fiji Indian Culture Centre, links these concepts in the following statement:

"Classical Indian music was developed by our deities, it's as ancient as Indian culture and

religion, and every other type of music came after that. So, Indian music is an integral

259Figure derived from Kumar and Prasad's 2001 survey sponsored by the National Federation Party. The

bottom 20 percent of the Indo-Fijian population accounts for only 5 percent of the community's nationalincome (Kumar and Prasad 2004: 473).260

For example, Ganeshwar Chand, in an article critiquing the "myth" of the "privileged Indo-Fijianmiddle class," distinguishes the affluent Gujarati minority as the visible indicator of Indo-Fijian dominanceof mid-level commerce in Fiji. "It is this segment of the 'Indo-Fijian' population," he writes, "that couldrightly be categorised as the well-to-do amidst the bulk of the poor" (Chand 1990: 167).

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part of devotional music, and devotion is an integral part of Indian music... But here in

Fiji not everybody understands that."

Apart from a handful of annual concerts by visiting artists, the local performance

of classical Indian music and dance tends to be sporadic and institution-based, occurring,

for example, in association with the Fiji Indian Culture Centre or educational hubs such

as the University of the South Pacific or Lautoka Teachers College. Several Fiji-born

individuals stand out as local experts, performers, and teachers of classical music,

including Satvik Dass in Nadi, Anandilal Amin in Ba, Naresh Chand in Lautoka, and

Vivek Nand in Suva, while many others have emigrated. This group represents the first

generation of students trained in the Fiji Indian Culture Centre system, although some,

such as Satvik Dass, received further training in India under scholarship. Today, their

students primarily learn Hindustani vocal, harmonium, tabla, and (less frequently) sitar.

In 2005, at the request of the Ministry of Multi-ethnic Affairs, Dass prepared a set

of guidelines intended to standardize Indian classical music pedagogy in Fiji based on

rag and tdl theory, sargam (Indian sol-fa syllables), mnemonic drum syllables, and other

basics of Hindustani music. Many students seek classical training from these

instructors in order to bring certain skills—particularly harmonium playing—back to

During my fieldwork year, I noted only four performances by visiting artists in the Lautoka area. TheIndian High Commission sponsored two separate events, one featuring Hindustani music and kathak, theother featuring Karnatak music and bharata natyam. Two other concerts, sponsored by local Indo-Fijianbusinesses, featured Talat Aziz and Mitalee Singh performing semiclassical ghazal, and Sumeet Tappooperforming semiclassical bhajan and ghazal. Tappoo, a gifted Fiji-born singer now living in India, is thedisciple of bhajan maestro Anup Jalota. All performances were well attended by, in my best estimation, amixed-class audience.

Dass' preamble to his guidelines is worth quoting: "In preparing this course I have taken a few factorsinto consideration: the different cultural backgrounds of the students, the extensive exposure to pop andother music through the radio, television, and cinema, and the instinctive performers and artists who areable to imitate music to a large extent without any basic training" (personal communication 2005).

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their Ramayan mandalis. Nand describes the transitory nature of these students: "I'll ask

them to show me the tune that they use to sing caupdl and dohd —the verses of the

Ramayan—or I'll compose it for them, and then I'll incorporate it into their [training]

program. And once they feel comfortable performing that, they leave." Dass reports that,

while his own students are receptive, his encounters with typical Sanatani musicians in

the community border on hostile: "These Ramayan mandalis don't know the meaning of

the notes—sometimes they play one note and sing another note.... When we [correct]

them, some of them don't like it, they feel offended. They think that we are a different

class of people."

Nonetheless, the producers and consumers of local folk music tend to demonstrate

a quiet respect for classical music and, as already noted, certain examples of

classicization are apparent in the practice of (and discourse about) local folk music. Like

the "pretentious" inclinations of Bourdieu's petit bourgeois, typical Sanatani musicians

may claim the "outward signs of cultural legitimacy" through the adoption of (often

superficial) details or processes associated with classical music (1984: 323). For example,

the use of the terms "aldp" or "rag" to describe the simple vocal statement that begins the

tambura bhajan suggests an allusion to the practice of introducing and exploring the rag

in the dldp of Hindustani compositions. Most musicians, trained by rote in the context of

Ramayan mandalis, lack an understanding of the basic principles of classical music,

including rag and tal theory. As Master Sailesh, a pracharak, told me, "We are not so

learned on these things, but we are able to understand the music. The dholakiyds play, but

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they don't know what tal it is they're playing." My own dholak instructor, Surya Prakash,

framed our teacher-pupil relationship around his (rather hazy) understanding of the

classical guru-sisya model. On one occasion, he requested an instructional DVD for tabla

players as a guru-daksind ("teacher's gift") because, as he put it, "If you are to go on

national TV as my student, we must learn the proper names for the rhythms I've been

teaching you. We can't go on TV and use the local names." Although the trappings of

classical music hold little relevance to performers in typical Sanatani settings, such as the

weekly Ramayana recital, the pressure to incorporate or at least acknowledge a

simulacrum of classical aesthetics or concepts appears to increase with the public

visibility of the performance context.

As revealed in my interviews, the force of classicization in Indo-Fijian society is

driven by a fundamental discourse relegating various phenomena of musical performance

into categories of "secular/entertainment" and "sacred/devotional." This discourse is, in

turn, a part of the larger project (co-implicated with Sanskritization) that questions the

viability of typical Sanatani practices in Fiji and the basic motivations of its practitioners.

Much like the debate over Ramlila discussed above, commentators of "high rank" in the

community, often positioned in the local media or key representative organizations, decry

the "secularization" of Hinduism in Fiji and predict its imminent loss of vitality. Such is

the case that, at the height of the "Hindu efflorescence" in the late 1970s, the Indo-Fijian

poet and academic Subramani declared that "Hinduism no longer governs the life of

Indo-Fijians" (1979: xi). Others claim that a significant number of devotees attend

Sanatani events, such as Ramayana recitation, only as a religious "formality," seeking

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social intercourse rather than devotional communion or moral instruction. Pandit Jagdish

Sharma, stationed at a prominent Hindu temple, conveyed this concern to me in the

following rhetorical question: "If I say, 'Ram Ram, I am a devotee of Ram, I am reading

the Ramayan,' but at the same time I do not respect my father, I do not respect my

family, I do not respect my elders—then what is the use of reading the Ramayan and

saying 'I am Hindu'?" Broadly speaking, the discourse of classicization advances this

critique by reifying practices derived from art music as religiously efficacious while

criticizing those derived from local folk music as mere "entertainment." As discussed

below, this discourse tends to dovetail with related narratives of Sanskritization,

particularly those that locate the sources of Hindu authority as external to Indo-Fijian

history and experience.

In the course of my interviews, the discourse of classicization manifested as a

critique of local folk music, including its performance style, instrumentation, melodic

content, and performance contexts. One of the primary complaints of the music teachers

and other musicians dedicated to the classical or semiclassical aesthetic is that local folk

music performance style tends to emphasize rapid tempos and consistent loudness at the

expense of its devotional text, which is rendered nearly unintelligible. As one interlocutor

puts it, the local style of singing Faag, Ramayana caupdl, or tambura bhajan is simply

"too fast, aggressive, and noisy." Naresh Chand, the respected singer and teacher,

compares the local folk style with the semiclassical ghazal: "In ghazal, the style of

singing and the pronunciation of the words—how beautifully you pronounce the words—

that's important, not the rhythm. But in village folk singing, it's the rhythm. You don't

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bother about the words." A related critique targets some of the folk instruments used in

local music, particularly the metal rod percussion idiophone called dahda tdl, which is

nearly ubiquitous in the local folk ensemble. Much as the tabla set may replace the

dholak in certain ensembles, the dahda tdl may be jettisoned in favor of the softer, more

delicate manjird hand cymbals. As Shiu Prasad, a Lautoka-based pracharak, explains,

"We don't want too much noise in front of God. He's not deaf you know, he's God, the

creator. If you pray to God, it should be very polite and very peaceful.... The dahda tdl is

good for qawalis, but not for bhajans and Ramayan because you need bhav ["feeling"];

you're singing from your own heart for the God."

A third critique questions the prevalent use of popular Hindi film song melodies

in local folk music, particularly the Ramayana recitation. The use of the latest film tunes,

says Chand, "makes it attractive to the young people, but in a wrong way, I feel.... What

will that listener be thinking about at that time? Maybe his attention is diverted to that

film, he's not thinking about the Ramayan." Singers such as Chand influenced by

international expounders, such as Morari Bapu, and semiclassical recording artists, such

as Anup Jalota, prefer a rag-based melody, which they identify as more appropriate to

Ramayana explication. Certain rags, such as yaman commonly used in semiclassical

bhajans, convey a "devotional mood." Says Chand, "In Ramayan we call it ras

Manuel notes a similar critique of film music parody in North India, particularly in the case ofdevotional genres: "[O]n a very overt level, the borrowed melodies may remind listeners of the specificcinematic scenes in which they were picturized...." As in Fiji, however, "[o]n a more general level, thecontroversy has to do with the implications of folk performers incorporating commercial elements intootherwise 'pure' traditions" (Manuel 1993: 136).

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["essence" or "mood"]. A particular rag should be used for a specific ras. Like when

Ram is in the forest thinking about his family, the "Kajra re" tune [a film song] doesn't

fit. But people in Fiji don't care, they do it anyway."264 Finally, the discursive critique of

local folk music extends to its performance contexts, particularly regarding the

appropriateness of competitive stage shows like the pratiyogitd or muqdbld. While music

experts such as Prasad gladly serve as judges at community events like the Grand Faag

Competition, they remain wary of the late-night bhajan stage shows that pit two singers

in competition. "They shouldn't be doing bhajan muqdbld," says Prasad, "because bhajan

means bhav—whatever you sing should be all for God, not for muqdbla." Chand

reiterates this point, linking it with a critique of the bhajaniyas notorious interpersonal

wordplay, "They are not singing about devotion, they are singing about competition.

When two people are singing bhajans at a religious function, they'll create verses to

downgrade each other, and the audience will cheer. That is not devotion."

This discourse of classicization, although articulated by a minority, has a

significant impact on the practice of local folk music due to its deployment in the

curriculum of official representative institutions, such as the Fiji Indian Culture Centre.

The musical authority of the Centre's teachers, including several of the individuals

mentioned above, derives from their command of a restricted area of knowledge linked

with a superior image of "Hindu culture." Buttressed by their educational capital, these

264

Chand's reference to ras, like Prasad's reference to bhdv before him, alludes to the classical theory ofrasa-bhdva in which the knowledgeable, receptive listener interprets and enjoys (i.e. experiences the rasa,or "flavors") the bhdva ("feelings") represented and projected by the artist.

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teachers—all music lovers devoted to their art—advance the "classical aesthetic" as the

"dominant aesthetic," applying a "high," "refined" standard of musical practice to a realm

of discourse and performance based on the aesthetics of North Indian folk music on the

one hand and captivated by the aesthetics of popular Indian film music on the other. This

discourse succeeds where it convincingly portrays these local musical practices as

degraded, secularized, and entertainment-oriented while simultaneously promoting the

classical aesthetic as pure, ancient, and inherently divine—in other words, viably

authentic to the practice of Hinduism.

In the context of Fiji, as a node in the South Asian diaspora, the mechanics of

classicization are not merely vertical and complicit with class but also horizontal and

complicit with geography. The aspiration to classical standards becomes inseparable from

the veneration of India as a cultural homeland. The appeal of Indian classicism among

Fiji's broad Sanatani proletariat and ambiguous middle class involves an element of

class/status aspiration, but such aspirations tend to be overshadowed by the genuine

desires of individuals to adopt the practices they perceive as the most "correct," "proper,"

or advantageous in the context of musical performance and religious ritual. It follows that

classicization, much like Brahmanization, operates as an agent of Sanskritization,

locating the sanctity and efficaciousness of classical music in early Sanskrit treatises such

as the Ndtyasdstra and the Sahgltaratndkara. By situating the source of musical authority

in the Sanskritized past, the discourse of classicization bypasses the Indo-Fijian musical

inheritance of indenture tied to Ram-bhakti and Brahmanical orthodoxy. In this way, the

standardizing influence of classicization in the South Asian diaspora suggests a leveling

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conducive to the spread of the sort of "universal" Hinduism discussed in chapter 5. With

the growing importance of transnational Hindu organizations such as the World Hindu

Council and the Himalayan Academy on the one hand and the global impact of

classically-trained international Ramayana expounder-singers such as Morari Bapu and

Ramesh Bhai Oza on the other, the sounds of Hinduism may be further distilled, leading

to a sense of the "classical" that is not only "timeless" but "spaceless" as well.

Conclusion

As a companion to chapter 6, this chapter follows various rural Indo-Fijian

musical practices into the urban context of the city, particularly Lautoka on the

northwestern coast of Viti Levu. Through an analysis of musical genres that emphasize

both collective performance (the repertoire of the Ramayan mandali) and individual

achievement (the soloist arts of tambura bhajan and qawali), I have developed two

complementary, interpretive themes introduced in the previous chapter. The first

examines the relationship between musical performance, subethnic identity, and the

constitution of "community." In the case of the Ramayan mandali, the most widespread

Sanatani ensemble in Fiji, the negotiation of subethnic membership is intimately related

to the maintenance of satsahg, a sense of fraternal fellowship that serves as a

precondition of collective religious devotion. "South Indian" Hindus, as a minority within

the larger North Indian-derived Sanatani community, demonstrate a position of dual

access: particular individuals and families may move between practices derived from

South India, such as the Shakta rites associated with the sehnai-dhappala ensemble, and

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those derived from North India, such as the Ramayan mandali with its core ensemble of

harmonium, dholak, dahda tal and other idiophones. In some cases, Ramayan mandalis

are of exclusive South Indian membership, but in the urban context an increasing number

of mandalis include both North Indians and South Indians, promoting a notion of

communal satsang in which subethnicity is irrelevant. In a similar way, the Ramayan

mandali has the potential to cut across issues of age, class, and gender. For example,

while women typically form their own devotional music groups, some devotees challenge

the Indian inheritance of gender-segregated performance by combining men and women

in "mixed mandalis."

The subethnic disambiguation of the Indo-Fijian "community" in terms of

religious affiliation occurs most clearly in the context of local qawali performance, which

engenders a discourse regarding Hinduism, Islam, and representation. Qawali, as one of

the oldest styles of "local folk music," has long been popular with Hindu performers,

particularly the styles of "bhajan qawali" (a Hindu bhakti genre) and "Fiji qawali" (a

topical genre). Even after the "Muslimization" of qawali in Fiji during the 1970s, Hindu

singers continued to dominate qawali performance including the revitalized "Muslim

qawali" common to weddings and stage competitions. These Hindu singers tend to

reconcile their own faith with the Islamic texts and contexts of qawali performance

through a discourse of religious universalism that posits a unity of practice for Hinduism

and Islam. A central claim of this chapter is that the intersections of subethnicity,

including aspects of regionalism and religion, occur in the contexts of musical

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performance, and more to the point, cultural actors negotiate competing visions of the

Indo-Fijian "community" through musical performance.

I identify the second interpretive theme to coalesce in this chapter as "viable

authenticity": the subjective quality of a (musical) cultural practice, sanctioned by a

particular discourse, that invests that practice with a heightened efficacy in the context of

a (religious) cultural event. For Indo-Fijian musicians there are three primary source-

discourses for viability in local performance: the discourse of "rural memory," which

advocates the "local folk music" aesthetic associated with the girmitiya generation; the

discourse of Bollywood, which offers a connection to the "modern" aesthetic of India

through musical quotation or parody; and the discourse of classicization, which advances

the "refined, ancient" aesthetic through institutionalized training, touring artists, and the

transnational media. As a diasporic community, Indo-Fijians seek in each discourse a

tenable connection to an imagined India. It is, therefore, particularly significant that the

latter two discourses—Bollywood and classicization—largely circumvent the experiential

and musical inheritance of Fiji's history of indenture. Due to continuous rural-urban drift,

cities such as Lautoka maintain important ties to rural Indian settlements (and

sentiments), even as venerable "village" institutions like the Ramayan mandali absorb

new influences in the altered demographic context of the city. In the course of the

mandali's weekly Ramayana recital that unfolds through a series of purificatory songs

designed to welcome Ram as the ultimate houseguest, devotees temper the folk-based

foundation of their musical style with popular Hindi film tunes or semiclassical bams

gleaned from transnational sources. Likewise, the tambura bhajan, one of the oldest and

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most respected local devotional genres, remains appealing and relevant to Sanatani youth

through its incorporation of the latest Hindi film tunes, which seamlessly conform to the

genre's distinctive local structure.

The debate over viable authenticity takes a political turn as we move away from

the relatively private spheres of Sanatani ritual and towards the more public realms of

festivalization and institutionalization. It is here that the discourse of classicization exerts

its subtle hegemony, both directly through musical education and indirectly through its

reified status as the "timeless" exemplar of "high Hindu culture." At the heart of this

discourse is a critique that relegates local folk and filmi aesthetics to the secular realm of

"entertainment" while propagating the aesthetics of classical and semiclassical music as

more appropriate and efficacious in Hindu practice. In this way classicization, much like

Brahmanization, is revealed as a process of Sanskritization, which acts on the local

practice of Ram-bhakti with a standardizing force. While the homogenizing element of

classicization appears to complement the recent turn of key representative Hindu

organizations in Fiji towards the tenets of an emerging "universal" Hinduism, typical

Sanatanis will continue to vote with their feet (and their hands and voices), choosing to

adopt the musical and devotional practices that they see as the most viable and relevant to

their experiences.

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Section IV

Music and Representation: Indo-Fijians, the Nation, and Transnationalism

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Chapter 8. In the Fold of the Nation: Indo-Fijians, Performance, and the National Context

I begin this chapter with an extended quote from the memoirs of Satendra

Nandan, the Indo-Fijian poet, academic, and former politician (and coup victim) who

grew up near the Nadi River in Western Viti Levu:

Looking back now, I realise that the river had brought us in closest contactwith the Fijians who dwelt in their koros [villages] on the other bank ofthe Nadi. "Dwelt," to me, conveys the distances of Fijian lives from ours.We lived separated, separate lives. More than a river was in between.Growing up on separate banks of a river, living in different villages,working on different kinds of farms, going to different schools, praying indifferent places of worship, looking different, even eating different kindsof food cooked differently, speaking different tongues, and coupled withthe tyranny of difference in colonial policy of keeping the migrants andthe natives separate, we began to see ourselves and each other differently.But, oh, now the difference to me! (2001: 91)

Following Section Three, which dealt with issues and phenomena largely internal to the

Indo-Fijian population, this chapter and its companion pull back the focus to consider

Indo-Fijian musical performance in the contexts of the nation-state and transnational

networks of immigration, respectively. As Nandan suggests, the narrative of Fiji as a

bicultural state is typically articulated in terms of mutual alienation—an inventory of

difference engendered and sustained through a collusion of historical and social forces.

Yet the tenacity of social segregation (as Nandan goes on to relate), while both

anecdotally significant and empirically measurable, masks a second, less-explored

narrative of ethnic interaction, cultural sharing, and mutual amity accomplished through

actual (and figurative) river crossings. As detailed in this chapter, the performance of

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music and dance, whether ethnically marked or deliberately cross-cultural, is a critical

site for nation making in Fiji, particularly in the representative contexts of the tourist

industry and government-sponsored events.265

The literature on nationalism, dominated in recent decades by the tropes of

"invented traditions" and "imagined communities"—as articulated by Eric Hobsbawm

(1983) and Benedict Anderson (1991), respectively—has increasingly engaged issues of

performance, representation, and power. We must ask, as Kelly Askew does in her

ethnography Performing the Nation (2002), just who does the "inventing" of a tradition

or the "imagining" of a nation (14). Askew, following other scholars such as Akhil Gupta

(1995), examines the nation-state in terms of 1) its official discourses and representations,

and 2) the everyday, lived practices of individuals, and—importantly—the co-implication

of both phenomena. Whether termed the "state" and the "citizenry," "macro" and

"micro," or "top-down" and "bottom-up," she suggests that the dialectic between the two

is not exclusively in the hands of the political or economic elite; rather, the performative

practices of "ordinary citizens" have the potential to contest, construct, and thus represent

the (ever fluid) identity of the nation (2002: 270). To escape the finality implied by

imagined communities, Askew offers "national imaginaries," a term that captures the

"multiple and often contradictory layers and fragments of ideology that underlie

continually shifting conceptions of any given nation" (ibid.: 273).

265My use of the term "nation making" is deliberate and informed by Robert J. Foster's explication of theterm in his edited collection Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia (1995).Reflective of the processual turn in anthropology, the concept of "nation making" posits the nation as "animaginative construct that constitutes persons as legitimate subjects of and in a territorial state" (ibid.: 5,emphasis in the original). Furthermore, "nation making" is analytically distinct from its predecessor "nationbuilding," which Foster critiques as preoccupied with the comparative study of newly independent colonialstates and steeped in an analytical framework of "modernization" (ibid. 3).

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In a similar vein, Gupta's recent theorization of the nation-state co-authored with

Aradhana Sharma (2006) conceives of the state as "culturally embedded" and

"discursively constructed" through the interplay of public cultural representations and

everyday statist proceduralism, which both occur in spaces increasingly defined by their

transnational connections. Within this multivalent conception of the state rests a central

question: Just how does one study the "represented" state? The answer, they suggest, lies

in intertextual representations originating from multiple agents and transmitted (often

redundantly) through various media, the analysis of which permits us to "tease out shifts,

overlaps, and disjunctures in the (re)production of the state in a spatial frame that

transcends the nation" (Gupta and Sharma 2006: 19). Furthermore, they correctly identify

the advantages of an ethnographic approach to nationalism, which foregrounds the

cultural differences that belie the state, thus providing a deeper understanding of the

"conditions in which the state successfully represents itself as coherent and singular"

(ibid.: 10).

The confluence of these phenomena in the particular process of "making" the

nation of Fiji has prompted a prolific and ever-expanding body of academic literature

from various disciplinary perspectives including history, political science, economics,

postcolonial studies, and anthropology. Of particular note in this latter category is John

D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan's provocative monograph Represented Communities (2001).

Writing against Anderson's "imagined communities," the authors contend that nation

266A non-exhaustive list of the most significant publications includes Peter France (1969), RusiateNayacakalou (1975), Eddie Dean and Stan Ritova (1988), Robert Norton (1990), Victor Lal(1990),Stephanie Lawson (1991), Asesela D. Ravuvu (1991), William Sutherland (1992), Brij V. Lal (1992, 1998,2006), Ralph R. Premdas (1995), Henry J. Rutz (1995), and Robbie Robertson and William Sutherland(2001).

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making in colonial and postcolonial states is primarily a matter of controlling the

representations, both semiotic and political, that ultimately shape communal identities.

While it is wiser, as has been endlessly reiterated in Anderson's wake, todepict communities, national and otherwise, as imagined rather thanactually organically primordial, this insight does not explain themechanisms that make some "imaginaries" more foundational than others,nor how alternative representations gain the substance to change things.Actual regimes of representation, routines legal and otherwise, constitutethe communities represented. (Kelly and Kaplan 2001: 99)

Kelly and Kaplan's point is that "top down" representations, such as the "Fijian" and

"Indian" racial categories imposed upon the citizenry by colonial officials, are often

resisted by the heterogeneous subjects they represent who, in turn, counter with their own

self-generated representations. The astute observer, they suggest, can detect and

disentangle the imposed and self-generated representations in the actual histories of

nation-states where they operate in an asymmetrical, dialogical relationship involving a

multitude of agents.

In sum, recent scholarship depicts the process of nation making as a contest

between multiple national imaginaries originating from both top-down (the state) and

bottom-up (the citizenry) sources of agency and propagated through intertextual

representations, of which cultural performance is a primary and particularly efficacious

example. Confronted with an array of internal and irreversible postcolonial differences,

efforts to represent Fiji as a cohesive nation-state have taken various forms, yet the most

persistent, as described below, invoke the discourse of "multiculturalism." British

officials sowed the seeds of multiculturalism in independent Fiji during the postwar

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period, at which time policy shifted to encourage cross-racial political cooperation in

preparation for decolonization. In historian Robert Norton's assessment, the colonial

government maintained the view that "the races were divided and national unity must be

secured through institutions that acknowledged the division. Conciliation was built on the

retention of symbols of racial difference and reciprocal acknowledgment of rights and

interests" (1990: 57).

"Multiracialism" became the cornerstone of the Alliance Party administration

headed by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, successfully suppressing both the Indo-Fijian

political vision of a "national citizenry" purportedly achievable through common roll

voting and the ethnonationalist agenda of the indigenous Fijian political fringe, whose

banner read, "Fiji for the Fijians." The 1970 Independence Constitution enshrined the

multiracial paradigm through communal voting and the race-based allotment of House

seats while taking careful measures to ensure indigenous Fijian paramountcy (see chapter

3). The period of indigenous Fijian (Christian) nationalism ushered in by the 1987

military coups temporarily abandoned the political experiment of multiracialism.

However, after former coup-leader Sitiveni Rabuka returned to power (more legitimately)

as Prime Minister, he appeared on national television calling for "an achieving nation,

rich in diversity ... a nation of several spiritual values, a nation dancing to many cultural

forms" (Norton 2000: 87).268 The restorative 1997 Constitution revived the multiracial

paradigm (now updated to "multicultural" or "multiethnic"), and the official recognition

267Henry J. Rutz describes this pre-coup multiracial paradigm associated with Mara as a "rhetoric ofaccommodation" that stands at one end of a dialogic continuum opposite an "Indian assimilationistrhetoric" associated with A.D. Patel, who espoused common franchise (1995: 74).

268This is an excerpt from an address made on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Fiji's independence in 1995.

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and accommodation of "discrete" ethnic populations with unique cultural differences

persevered into the twenty-first century, surviving George Speight's 2000 coup

attempt.269

In this chapter, I analyze the discourse of multiculturalism as deployed by the

Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) government during the inter-coup period

between Speight's failed attempt in 2000 and the "successful" military take-over of

December 5, 2006. In particular, I highlight the important role played by cross-cultural

performance, both official and "grassroots," in reifying or challenging the government's

prescribed vision of multiculturalism, a contest over representation that remains central to

nation making in Fiji. The first section presents an overview of ethnic relations in

contemporary Fiji focusing on indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, the islands' two main

ethnic groups. Through a detailed inventory of mutually held ethnic stereotypes and

socio-cultural differences, this section is intended to contextualize the significance and

impact of cross-cultural performance in Fiji. The second section introduces the first of

two case studies of cross-cultural performance that I documented during the year prior to

the 2006 coup, during which the doomed SDL government launched a campaign of

"reconciliation" and "unity" designed to portray Fiji as a harmonious multiethnic nation.

Specifically, I analyze the government's appropriation for this purpose of an emergent

269Although the1997 Constitution does not define "multiculturalism," it includes the term in its Preamble,

excerpted here: "... RECOGNISING that the descendants of all those who chose to make their homes inthese islands form our multicultural society; AFFIRMING the contributions of all communities to the well-being of that society, and the rich variety of their faiths, traditions, languages and cultures; TAKINGPRIDE in our common citizenship and in the development of our economy and political institutions;COMMITTING ourselves anew to living in harmony and unity, promoting social justice and the economicand social advancement of all communities, respecting their rights and interests and strengthening ourinstitutions of government..." Source: Fiji Government, "Constitution (Amendment) Act 1997,"http://www.paclii.org/fj/legis/numact/cal 1997268/. Accessed September 15,2007.

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"fusion" performance genre that combines classical Indian dance with indigenous Fijian

dance and music. In the third section, I contrast this public, politicized convergence of

nationalism and cultural performance with an analysis of a very different case study:

indigenous Fijian singers who specialize in the Indo-Fijian repertoire of Hindi folksongs

and Hindu devotional music. This "crossover" phenomenon occurs far from the national

spotlight, often in the rural sugarcane areas of Fiji where the two major ethnic groups

coexist. Still, a fundamental point of both examples is that such collaborations remain

rare even after nearly 130 years of cohabitation. In the context of Fiji's "coup culture,"

both case studies speak to issues of ethnic identity as they demonstrate the symbolic and

generative power of cross-cultural performance in bicultural states.

Ethnic Relations in Contemporary Fiji: An Overview

On July 2, 2004, as the long-delayed prosecution of Speight coup supporters

began to pick up steam, a senator rose to her feet in Parliament with an unexpected

motion: "Mr. President, Sir, I strongly recommend that in the interest of truth and

national security, Government must take the necessary steps to criminalise the use of the

word 'Indo-Fijian' and fine whoever uses the term after a certain date." The timing of the

motion, brought forth by Senator Adi Litia Cakobau, was politically charged and

270 My analysis of the socio-political situation in Fiji as "bicultural" in this chapter reflects the dominanceof the two main ethnic groups in terms of cultural policy and political representation. Recall that the 1996Census, the population count that informed the inter-coup years of the SDL administration, recordedindigenous Fijians at 52 percent of the total population and Indo-Fijians at 41 percent—the remainder of"Others" was a mere 7 percent. As noted and analyzed below, the depiction of Fiji's population as"multicultural" by its leaders is a political choice with local ramifications. Source of statistics: Fiji IslandBureau of Statistics, "Census of the Population," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj. AccessedNovember 12, 2007.

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criticized by some as manipulative of the emotions stirred by the coup trials. Referring to

her great-great-grandfather, she continued, "It is my inherited duty as a direct descendant

of Ratu Seru Cakobau, the principal original recipient of our legal ethnic group identifier

'Fijian,' to raise my concern on the subtle and devious means of psychological

domination being systematically employed by social engineers of Indian origin to usurp

the name 'Fijian.'" The promotion of the term "Indo-Fijian," she claimed, was nothing

short of identity theft, a "process of dispossession" threatening "our name, land and other

hereditary rights," perpetrated by "Indian" academics, journalists, and "spin-doctors,"

otherwise glossed as "invaders." The motion, which failed to pass, revived a brief debate

in the media over ethnic labeling but otherwise faded from view. Still, the senator's

speech in Parliament was striking for its public airing of ethnic stereotypes and fears

more often kept private, particularly during the politically sensitive inter-coup period.

Ethnic stereotyping in Fiji, of course, cuts both ways, and the long-held negative

perception of Indo-Fijians held by indigenous Fijians is easily matched by the former's

perception of the latter.272 Senator Cakobau's carefully worded discourse about the

271The historian Brij V. Lal, one of the "Indian social engineers" identified by Cakobau, dismissed thesenator's claims in a letter to the Fiji Times as "a storm in a bilo" and an "opportunistic diversion" (Letterin the "Voice of the People" section, The Fiji Times, 8 July 2004). A bilo is a small cup used to drink kava.The 1997 Constitution, like its predecessors, refers to citizens of Indian descent as "Indian" and offers the(rarely used) term "Fiji Islander" as a name for citizens of all ethnic groups. A survey held a month afterthe Cakobau controversy asked the question: "What term should we use every day to describe those livingin Fiji who are of Indian descent?" It is worth noting that 37 percent of the indigenous Fijian respondentschose "Indo-Fijian," 36 percent chose "Indian," 14 percent chose "Fiji Indian," while 9 percent chose"Fijian" (Tebbutt Poll, The Fiji Times, 1 September 2004). The quotes from Senator Cakobau's motion areexcerpted from the Parliament of Fiji: Parliamentary Debates: The Senate: Daily Hansard, Friday, 2 July2004.272

The mutual stereotyping of each group is not merely anecdotal. Several scholars trained in the socialsciences have addressed and documented these perceptions, including Cato (1955), Mayer (1961), Herbst(1976), Nayacakalou (1978), Crocombe (1981), S. Lal (1998), de Vries (2000), and Trnka (2002a); othersources include Vakatora (1988) and Qalo (1979). My use of the terms "indigenous Fijian" and "Indo-

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"subtle and devious" Indian invokes the common but quietly held view among

indigenous Fijians that Indo-Fijians are untrustworthy: "Indians are all alike, clever and

sneaky" (Herbst 1976: 165).273 The critique extends to materialism ("money-hungry" and

"greedy"), social behavior ("individualistic" and "selfish"), and religion ("idol-

worshipers" and "Godless"). As Ron Crocombe succinctly notes, the "caricature image of

Indians for many Pacific people is the mynah bird, which was imported from India.

Raucous, assertive and self-seeking, the mynah bird has pushed out many indigenous

species" (1981: 209). But the indigenous Fijian's central complaint is that Indo-Fijians

make no effort to understand the Fijian "traditional way of life" (vakavanua) or adhere to

Fijian "customs of respect" (vakaturaga). In the words of Tomasi Vakatora, one of the

architects of the 1997 Constitution, "Some aspects of their manners, values and other

characteristics go 'against the grain' of the Fijians' valued principles.... No doubt, the

Indians obtained their material wealth through toil and sweat, but in their stride they tend

to forget the interests of the other communities living around them" (1988: 86).274 In the

broadest conception, indigenous Fijians see themselves as taukei ("owners of the land")

and Indo-Fijians as vulagi ("visitors" or "perpetual foreigners"). The taukei-vulagi

dynamic reflects a precolonial arrangement of access to land and resources most

famously articulated by the academic and politician Asesela Ravuvu: "The best analogy

Fijian," particularly in this chapter, should not be interpreted to refer to monolithic cultural groups. Asstated earlier, internal heterogeneity tends to suffer elision at the level of national discourse. Additionally,each group tends to lack a sophisticated understanding of the internal cultural differences displayed by theother (see, for example, Herbst 1976: 152).273

From the author's interview with a Suva-dwelling indigenous Fijian.274

Vakatora's words echo one of Philip Herbst's main conclusions regarding ethnic relations in Suva:"[T]he fact that is most salient to the natives is that the Indians have become successful by threatening,rather than protecting or contributing to, the interests of the natives" (1976: 225).

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to this taukei and vulagi relationship is that of the host and guest.... The host is generally

in command, and the guest must comply with the host's requirements if he is to be

accepted and accommodated. If the guest does not comply to the host's expectations he

may very well leave before he is thrown out of the house" (1991: 60).

The Indo-Fijian perception of indigenous Fijians is, likewise, often negative—

tempered in public but frank behind closed doors. Stemming from the indenture period,

an underlying sense persists that indigenous Fijians are "primitive" and "dirty" (maila),

only a century removed from cannibalism. This prejudice informs the derogatory terms

for indigenous Fijians still occasionally used in Fiji Hindi, including jati and jungli. Indo-

Fijians may bolster this critique through recourse to their own "superior" culture rooted

in the antiquity of a classical, literate, and spiritual Indian past. Adrian C. Mayer picked

up on this discourse during conversations with rural Indo-Fijians during the early 1950s:

"[T]hey went on from this to suggest that the Fijian had been living in a rough, tribal

society whose continuing elements militated against his entry into the 'modern'

democratically-run world of which Fiji Indians were themselves a part" (1961 : 182).

Several field consultants suggested to me that Indo-Fijians were responsible for building

the modern nation-state of Fiji and "bringing civilization" to the indigenous Fijians. One

taxi driver opined that if all of the Indo-Fijians vacated Fiji "trees would soon be growing

in the middle of the road." Other field consultants remarked that indigenous Fijians were

"lazy," "unmotivated," and occasionally "dangerous." A few complained of physical

threats or harassment while others expressed resentment over "racist" government

policies and affirmative action programs in education and employment.

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This mutual ethnic stereotyping, although certainly bleak, is constantly challenged

by the everyday actions of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, who generally—I hasten

to add—demonstrate amicable and cooperative relations. Less clear, however, is the

depth of these relationships and the mutual impact these daily interactions have on the

"separated, separate lives" of two ethnic groups divided by a chasm of difference. As is

often claimed, the social division of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians stems, in part,

from the colonial legacy of divide and rule, as several features of British governance

were enshrined in Fiji's postcolonial constitutions. For example, a colonial law

forbidding Indo-Fijians to settle in indigenous Fijian villages fostered the development of

autonomous, incongruent social systems. Based on fieldwork from the late 1960s, the

anthropologist Rusiate Nayacakalou notes the extent of this division in the village of

Lomawai, located in the heart of the Indo-Fijian sugarcane belt:

The Indians around Lomawai have made little or no impact upon thesocial life of the village. They lead their own lives on their smallleaseholds, rarely visiting the village. There is no formal principle withinthe social organisation of the village which provides for acceptance ofIndians into active social relations with the villagers.... Conversely, theFijians of Lomawai have made little or no impact upon the social life andorganisation of the Indian families who lease land from them, althoughthere is some fluency in Hindustani on the part of most men of the village.(1978: 71-72)

During the same period, at the eleventh hour of British rule in Fiji, the anthropologist

Philip Herbst describes a similar segregation in the urban center of Suva: "When I first

arrived in Fiji I attempted to take note of every instance in which I saw Fijians and

Indians together on an informal basis. I soon abandoned the project because there were

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very few instances to count" (1976: 141). As described below, minimal or superficial

social relationships between the two major ethnic groups remained the norm during my

fieldwork period—with a few important exceptions.

Multiple cultural and social barriers inhibit significant, transformative interactions

between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, including traditional social hierarchies,

kinship obligations, and social etiquette, but the most entrenched are language use,

educational patterns, and religious practice. English is the primary lingua franca for

ethnic groups in Fiji, but the natal languages of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians

remain, respectively, Fijian (either the standard Bauan or a particular dialect) and Fiji

Hindi (with a secondary knowledge of Standard Hindi). In addition to the English-

language media, each of the majo thnic groups has its own vernacular newspapers,

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radio stations, and (to a lesser extent) television programs. Still, a degree of

trilingualism is relatively common. Most of the verbal interactions between indigenous

Fijians and Indo-Fijians that I witnessed in western Viti Levu occurred in limited Fiji

Hindi, although research suggests that Fijian was the more common language of trade

and commerce among previous generations (Mayer 1961: 180; Herbst 1976: 154).

Despite the government's longstanding commitment to multicultural policies in

education, the majority of primary and secondary schools in Fiji are either uniracial or

275During my fieldwork period, Hindi media included the weekly newspaper Shanti Dut, the radio stations

Radio Fiji Two, Radio Mirchi, Radio Sargam, and Radio Navtarang, and the television programs "KhaasKhabre" and "Jharokha" in addition to subcontinental programming available through cable.

A 1973 survey conducted in Nadi in western Viti Levu found that interethnic communication in theurban setting was most often in Fijian (54 percent), followed by English (30 percent), a Fijian-Englishmixture (10 percent), and Fiji Hindi (2 percent). The same survey noted that interethnic communication inthe rural setting was, again, most often in Fijian (42 percent) but followed by Fiji Hindi (29 percent) withEnglish at 13 percent (Siegel 1973:21

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dominated by one or the other ethnic group in terms of student body and staff. This de

facto segregation owes to the fact that the government operates only 0.3 percent of all

primary schools and 8 percent of all secondary schools, while most are run by non-

governmental organizations, many with a religious base. It is perhaps not surprising to

find that the rate of interethnic marriage between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians

remains very low.

Christianity is a fundamental, deeply cherished aspect of indigenous Fijian

identity, often expressed as loloma, a concept of "kindly love" idealized as "communal,

rural, Christian, and customary" (Kaplan 1995:189). In Henry J. Rutz's assessment,

Christianity completes and binds together the indigenous Fijian cultural triptych of

"chiefs, land, and church" (1995: 74). Essentially all indigenous Fijians (99.992 percent)

identify as some denomination of Christian with Methodism in the majority (67 percent),

followed by Catholicism (13 percent), Assembly of God (6 percent), Seventh Day

Adventist (5 percent), and others. As discussed further below, only 6 percent of Indo-

Fijians identify as Christian, and many devotees worship apart from their indigenous

Fijian brethren in "Indian churches."

277Source of figures: "Fiji Today, 2005-06," Fiji Government, http://www.fiji.gov.fi. Accessed December22,2005. A survey by Rodney F. Moag conducted during the 190s found that approximately 90 percent ofrural primary schools remained "communal" while this figure dropped to about 66 percent in urban areaslike Suva (Bullivant 1983: 240).

Indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian unions made up less than 1 percent of the total number of recordedmarriages in the 1996 Census. According to Portia Richmond's analysis, the majority involved an Indo-Fijian husband and an indigenous Fijian wife, occurred most often between Christians, and took place inthe Ba province in western Viti Levu followed closely by the Suva-Rewa area (2003: 102-03).

Figures derived from the Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Population by Religion and by Race1996Census of Population," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj/Social/religion_stats.htm. AccessedDecember 22, 2005.

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The political ascent of the Methodist Church following the coups of 1987 brought

demands for a "Christian state," and the calls were renewed during the unrest of 2000.

Displays of Christian nationalism—central to the larger project of Fijian

ethnonationalism—continued intermittently during the SDL period, as heard in this 2005

speech by Rev. Ame Tugaue, the General Secretary of the Methodist Church of Fiji and

Rotuma: "If God does get angry with the heathens, Christians will be punished because

they allowed the worship of idols and other lesser gods in Fiji.... Sodom and Gomorrah

were only destroyed after the Lord removed the faithful from there and not because of a

few would we allow God's wrath to befall the whole of Fiji."280 Hindu leadership in Fiji

points to such rhetoric as complicit with the consistent rate of burglary, vandalization,

and defilement of Indo-Fijian places of worship, the worst of which occurred in Lautoka

in October 1989 with the fire-bombing of a Sanatani Hindu temple, a mosque, a Sikh

gurdwara, and an ISKON temple by a mob composed of Methodist Youth Fellowship

members (see Kelly 1995). The majority of temple break-ins are economically motivated,

but accompanying acts of desecration are relatively common.281 Non-governmental

organizations including Interfaith Search, the People for Intercultural Awareness, and the

Citizens' Constitutional Forum have had limited success furthering cross-religious and

280"Faiths Must be Thankful," The Fiji Times, 27 March 2005. Kevin Barr points out that "while the

conservative/fundamentalist faction of the Methodist Church (and some other small Fijian-ledfundamentalist Churches) used Christianity as a means of legitimizing communalism and Fijiannationalism, other Christian Churches (including the more liberal section of the Methodist Church)preached reconciliation and multi-racialism" (2004: 13).281

Police statistics report twenty-nine "acts of sacrilege" for 2001, twenty-one for 2002, and thirty-six for2003, although these numbers include a minority of incidences involving Christian places of worship.Source: "Council Apologies for Desecration," The Fiji Times, 3 February 2005.

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cross-cultural education, citing challenges from the isolationist stance of the larger

religious organizations.

Such is the socio-political context for cross-cultural performance in contemporary

Fiji: a divisive colonial heritage, an educational system that remains largely segregated, a

very low occurrence of interethnic marriage, and an inventory of difference (often

exploited by political figures) that includes natal languages, religious practices, social

customs, and cultural values. The following two case studies demonstrate ways that

individuals of both ethnic groups negotiate these differences through collaborative or

cross-cultural performance. While the political narrative of the first case study, the

collaborative dance, articulates with the government's paradigm of multiculturalism, the

second case study, the indigenous Fijian "crossover" Hindi singers, offers a radically

different vision of ethnicity and ethnic relations in contemporary Fiji.

Choreographing (Against) Coup Culture: Reconciliation and Collaborative Performance

It is a critical fact of history that at the time of Fiji's independence in 1970 the

Indo-Fijian population demonstrated a clear and relatively stable majority over the

indigenous Fijian population (approximately 50 percent to 43 percent).283 With the exit of

282 For example, a representative of Interfaith Search reported that the Methodist Church had posed the"greatest challenge" to a program of cross-participation in different places of worship (Emberson-Bain2004). Similarly, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, the former vice-president of Fiji and a well-known proponent ofmulticulturalism, admonished the attendees of the 2005 annual Sanatan Dharm convention: "If you confineyourselves to your own ethnic cocoon, you will exacerbate and prolong existing tensions. In particularthose of you who remain despite vicissitudes must reach out to embrace your brothers and sisters in theFijian community. Why, you may well ask, should you make this unilateral gesture? Because they are theindigenous people, the first inhabitants of this land which they largely own, comprise over half thepopulation and nurse deeply held fears and insecurities about being marginalised in their own land." This isan excerpt from his printed address in the program booklet (Deo 2005: 9).283

Based on a comparison of the 1966 Census and 1976 Census; both provided by Lai (1992: 336-37).

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"Europeans" from governance, the analogy of Fiji as a "three-legged stool" gave way to

the postcolonial reality that Fiji was, politically, a bicultural state. In this sense, Mara's

policy of "multiracialism" appears to gloss the inconvenient fact of Indo-Fijian numerical

dominance. Nation making required new national rituals with space allocated for cultural

performances representing each "discrete" ethnic group.284

As discussed in chapter 7, the performing arts selected and honed to represent

Indo-Fijian culture were of the "classical" type associated with the Indian Culture Centre

in Suva: Hindustani vocal and instrumental music and classical dance styles such as

kathak and bharata natyam. As Fiji's first decade of independence progressed, however,

a minority of Indo-Fijian academics and artists began to question the appropriateness of

these choices. For example, the Indo-Fijian writer Raymond Pillai proposed a search for

forms of cultural expression reflective of the local Indo-Fijian experience that, he

suggested, would enable cultural liaisons with other communities. The following is an

excerpt from a radio address he delivered on the eve of nationwide celebrations marking

the centenary of indentured Indian arrival in Fiji:

One thing we Fiji Indians have to remember is that our culture is not forourselves only. We have to share it with other races, particularly theFijians. It is a matter of historical record that the Fijians and Indians havebeen kept apart for a century both by government decree and by mutualinclination. We cannot afford to continue this policy of isolation.... Isn't ittime we began to dismantle fences? Shouldn't we begin to chat moreamicably with our neighbours? I'm sure it can be done, but we are more

284Regarding the 1970 independence ceremonies, which were jointly planned by British colonial officers

and prominent European, indigenous Fijian, and Indo-Fijian locals, Kaplan observed, "In representing Fijithrough new national rituals, for the first time Indian rituals were included as part of official ceremonial. Infact, there was a full-scale, self-conscious attempt to give equal time to Fijian and Indian ceremonies andentertainment" (Kelly and Kaplan 2001: 131).

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likely to succeed if we think in terms of the local context instead ofimported exotic animals such as "pure" Hindi, Bharata Natyam andclassical music. (Pillai 1978: 2; emphasis mine)

Pillai envisioned an "Indian dance theatre" based on elements of folk drama culled from

Rdmllld and terukkuttu, although he felt that styles of "local folk music" such as qawali,

tambura bhajan, and chautal had too limited an appeal to make an impact and were, in

any case, irredeemably transformed by the influence of popular Hindi film music. Despite

such appeals, the public cultures of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians remained largely

discrete as the former drew on precolonial forms of song and dance (particularly meke)

and the latter continued to emphasize the classical performing arts. Following the

intervention of the 1987 coups, change would come gradually with the rebirth of

multiculturalism under the 1997 Constitution, the disruption of Speight's ethnonationalist

coup in 2000, and the subsequent ascent of the SDL government.

In this section, I present the first of two case studies situated during the inter-coup

years (2000-2006), a period defined by the legal, ethical, and political aftermath of

Speight's attempted coup, the first in Fiji's history to fail. Dominated by the mutually

contentious tropes of "justice" and "reconciliation," the return to normalcy deteriorated

into a protracted war of words between the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF)

commanded by Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama and the ruling SDL

government headed by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase. With a history marked by three

coups d'etat in less than twenty years—and the prospect of a fourth on the horizon—

Fiji's claim to model "the way the world should be" had gradually given way to the

reality of a "coup culture" that threatened the viability of democracy in the South Pacific.

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As discussed below, the hallmark of coup culture in Fiji includes the threat of physical

violence but more often evokes a type of "symbolic violence" enacted through the

discourses of coup perpetrators and hidden in the policies of the governments they bring

to power.

Accordingly, the SDL government sought a counter-narrative to "coup culture"

emphasizing national unity, multiculturalism, and reconciliation to be enacted both

through actual legislation and, importantly, cultural representations. To this end, the

government appropriated an emergent, collaborative dance genre loosely referred to as

"fusion dance" that combines indigenous Fijian meke with classical Indian dance. The act

of "fusing" these previously discrete, ethnically marked dance styles—which had served

as the standard-bearers of cultural representation during the Mara era of

multiculturalism—provided the ideal symbol for the SDL government's reconciliation

campaign. Critics of the government, particularly Bainimarama, countered that the SDL

government's celebration of ethnic diversity and national unity was merely a

smokescreen intended to divert attention away from its own ethnically divisive legislative

agenda. On December 5, 2006, Bainimarama delivered Fiji's fourth coup, removing the

SDL government in a quick, efficient, and bloodless takeover. Unlike the previous coups,

which sought to enshrine indigenous Fijian paramountcy, however, this coup claimed to

topple a corrupt government whose ethnonationalist policies threatened to exacerbate

ethnic tensions and seek amnesty for past coup perpetrators. For the first time, the

indigenous Fijian-dominated military had ousted an indigenous Fijian-dominated

government, and the Indo-Fijian community remained largely on the sidelines.

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In order to understand the origins of this collaborative dance genre and the

significance of its appropriation by the government, we must first examine the greater

history of Indo-Fijian representation within the tourist industry and the related domains of

local media, regional festivals, and national celebrations. As the primary source of Fiji's

revenue, the tourist industry is a critical site for competing national imaginaries, although

the dominant narrative remains the "Pacific Romance" emphasizing an ahistorical

mystique of indigenity and ecology (Kelly 1988c, 2000).285 Indo-Fijians, as an "alien

race" tied to the land merely through labor in a capitalist system, have no place in this

narrative. Representations of Fiji based on the Pacific Romance tend to either exclude

Indo-Fijians altogether or cast them as the spoilers of a South Pacific paradise.

Although the image of Fiji promoted by resorts and the Fiji Visitors Bureau continues to

center around indigenous Fijian men naked to the waist in "grass skirts" on a palm-lined

beach, the Pacific Romance narrative has yielded, to some degree, to the government's

narrative of "multicultural Fiji."

A key example here is the Fiji Museum, located in Suva and frequently visited by

tourists. Under colonial direction, the Fiji Museum developed a chronology-based

285This is Kelly's description of the Pacific Romance, which he understands to be institutionalized in Fiji's

Independence Constitution: "In the Pacific Romance, Fijians and Islanders are imagined as happy, loyal,innocent and carefree, with the wisdom of nature and none of the sins of modern society" (1988c: 410).Regarding the economic importance of the tourist industry to Fiji, the number of visitor arrivals in 2005 (asa sample year) was 459,911, generating revenue of $729.1 million FJD ($423.8 million USD). Source: FijiIsland Bureau of Statistics, "2006 Facts & Figures," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj. AccessedMay 3, 2007.

The most notorious example of the latter is James A. Michener, author of Tales of the South Pacific. Heprovides the following grim portrait of Indo-Fijians in a nonfiction essay that accompanies his short storyThe Mynah Birds, published in Return to Paradise, one of the ten best-selling novels of 1951: "It is almostimpossible to like the Indians of Fiji. They are suspicious, vengeful, whining, unassmilated, provocativealiens in a land where they have lived for more than seventy years. They hate everyone: black natives,white Englishmen, brown Polynesians and friendly Americans.... Above all, they are surly and unpleasant.It is possible for a traveler to spend a week in Fiji without ever seeing an Indian smile" (1951 :123).

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287He spoke these words at the inauguration of the Indo-Fijian Gallery on April 23, 1998.

988

As described earlier in this dissertation, Indo-Fijian "local folk music" operates in a manner largely

ignorant of classical rag theory. This is only the beginning of a critique of the gallery that exceeds the

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Beyond the Fiji Museum's Indo-Fijian Gallery, the most visible representation of

Indo-Fijian culture is the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple in Nadi, western Viti

Levu. At its opening in 1994, T.I.S.I Sangam President Y.P. Reddy called the temple

"our gift to the nation." Designed and built by specialists from southern India in

classical Dravidian style, the exquisitely carved and brightly painted structure is hard to

miss at the end of Nadi's tourist-oriented Main Street, and foreign visitors regularly

wander the site. Tourists also make up a portion of the audience attending the annual

firewalking ritual held at the Mariamman temple on Howell Road in Suva. The

firewalking ritual appears to represent a mode of worship marginal to mainstream

Hinduism, demonstrating ties to the rural origins of South Indian indentured laborers and

focusing on a non-Sanskritic "village goddess." Nonetheless, Carolyn Henning Brown

notes elements of Sanskritization at play in the firewalking ritual, including an English-

language pamphlet distributed to the audience composed by a Brahman pandit from India

limitations of this chapter. I do not deny that the Indo-Fijian Gallery addresses a critical era of Indo-Fijianhistory and that most members of the community would approve of the gallery's Sanskritizedrepresentation of Indo-Fijian culture. Moreover, the dominance of India-derived artifacts in the collectionaccurately reflects the continued reliance on or reverence for imported religious items, clothing, music, andart from India in contemporary Indo-Fijian life. Sagale Buadromo, the current director of the Fiji Museum,suggests that the gallery's emphasis on history helps address lacunae in local education, adding that anexpansion of the Indo-Fijian Gallery to include representations of contemporary life depends on financialsupport not forthcoming (personal communication 2006). It is interesting to note that the original fundingfor the gallery came from the combined efforts of the Indian and Multi-ethnic Affairs Department, FlourMills of Fiji (headed by Fiji Gujarati business man Hari Punja), The Reddy Group of Companies (headedby "South Indian" Indo-Fijian entrepreneur Y.P. Reddy), and the India-based Life Insurance Corporation ofIndia. Mr. Reddy is also the Chairman of the Fiji Girmit Council—the organization behind the GirmitCentre in Lautoka—and a key figure, along with the late N.K. Naidu, behind the fledgling Sangam Model

Village and Museum in Lovu, just outside of Lautoka.289

"Largest Temple in Fiji Opens," Hinduism Today, September 1994.

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who explains the origin and meaning of the ritual through recourse to "high" Hindu

concepts and terminology (1984: 229).290

In any case, tourists are more likely to encounter the performative representation

of Indo-Fijian culture within the confines of their own resorts. Several upmarket hotels

and resorts liaison with the Fiji Indian Culture Centre to arrange artists for a weekly

"Indian Curry Night," an evening of Indian cuisine and entertainment. Such evenings

may feature semiclassical Indian instrumental music, but classically trained dance troupes

are becoming more standard. A typical dance performance will involve a variety of

Indian dance forms performed to prerecorded music, beginning with a classical dance

style (usually kathak or bharata ndtyam), moving on to regional folk dances (such as

Gujarati ddndid rds or Punjabi bhangra), and concluding with a Bollywood-inspired filmi

dance. These same dance ensembles performing the same repertoire typically highlight

Fiji's annual regional festivals, targeted primarily to locals but also tourists, the most

famous of which is Suva's Hibiscus Festival. These festivals feature carnival rides and

several nights of cultural entertainment divided ethnically into a "Fijian Night," "Indian

Night," "Pacifica Night" (for other Pacific Islander residents), and so forth. A similar

roster of multicultural representations fills out the program for national celebrations such

290Each of the four firewalking rituals that I attended in western Viti Levu had been led by a Fiji-born

pandit (or pujari). These rituals tended to last all night, culminating with the actual firewalking at theauspicious hour of 5 AM. Tourists were almost completely absent. In contrast, the annual firewalking ritual(called Theemithi Thirunaal, according to the printed program) that I attended at the Suva Mariammantemple in August 2006 was led, for the first time, by two Brahman pandits visiting from southern India.The firewalking at this Suva temple has for decades occurred in the afternoon around 4 PM, reportedly todraw larger crowds, including tourists.291

The other annual festivals, all of which have a similar, multi-day format, are the Sugar Festival(Lautoka), Bula Festival (Nadi), Coral Coast Festival (Sigatoka), and Friendly North Festival (Labasa).

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as Fiji Day, which annually commemorates independence on October 10. Taken as a

whole, the representations of Indo-Fijian culture in the multicultural paradigm

demonstrate a noticeable intertextual pattern: a separate gallery in the Fiji Museum, the

distinct religion-based "tourist attractions," and the compartmentalized "Indian nights" in

the cycle of resort entertainment and regional culture shows. In each domain, these

representations respond to the national spotlight by highlighting their connection to a

glorious, classical Indian past and a "high," Sanskritized practice of Hinduism.

From this milieu of mosaic-like multicultural presentations emerged the

collaborative dance genre. Sometimes called "multicultural dance" or "fusion dance," the

genre is defined by the deliberate combining of indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian dance

styles, costumes, and musics into a single choreographed piece. This often occurs in one

of two ways. The more common involves a dance troupe of a single ethnicity (usually

Indo-Fijian) adopting or incorporating dance elements or styles understood to be

representational of another ethnic group (usually indigenous Fijian). An example of this

type would be an Indo-Fijian dance troupe performing the indigenous Fijian meke,

dressed in traditional masi (barkcloth, similar to Polynesian tapa) costumes, to

prerecorded Fijian music. Meke, as described further below, is a broad term referring to

"traditional" indigenous Fijian ensemble dance styles with musical accompaniment and a

sung narrative verse. The second type of "fusion dance," less common than the first,

features the actual collaboration of performers from two or more ethnic groups. This type

of cross-cultural performance forms my primary case study below: a collaboration

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between Indo-Fijian choreographer Shobna Chanel and the meke ensemble of the

Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF).

Chanel, one of the pioneers of the collaborative dance genre, describes herself as

a fourth-generation descendent of indentured laborers. Like other choreographers of the

collaborative dance genre, including Sharon Khelawan and Chandrani Pillay, Chanel is

classically trained and maintains a close association with the Fiji Indian Culture Centre.

All three choreographers describe the motivation behind their work in terms of cross-

cultural education designed to encourage their own indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian

students to develop new perspectives and relationships through cultural sharing.292 In

1995, the Shobna Chanel Dance Group, the choreographer's troupe of young Indo-Fijian

women, began to perform kathak choreography to Fijian popular music by artists such as

Saimone Vuatalevu. Encouraged by their positive reception, Chanel infused the

choreography with indigenous Fijian and other Polynesian dance movements,

incorporated Fijian materials into the costuming, and set dance sequences to

neotraditional popular Fijian music by groups like Black Rose. Her business card

advertises the group as "promoting racial harmony through dance and music." Chanel

described to me her group's crossover success: "I think a lot of the locals, the natives

here respect us a lot for the fusion dances. It's like we've made a breakthrough. Even for

Fijian functions, they invite us to come and perform.... It truly unites people who come

to watch." Although the popularity of the "fusion dance" genre is spreading, Chanel's

292Cross-cultural dance experiments have occurred in schools and cultural institutes throughout the

independence period as a means of cultural education, but the frequency and consistency was never enoughto qualify as a phenomenon, and these dances—usually of the monoethnic type—rarely achieved nationalvisibility.

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group remains the troupe most closely associated with the phenomenon. As such, they

have received numerous invitations to perform at official events around Fiji and have

repeatedly represented their country abroad.293

The particular performance analyzed here took place on January 6, 2006, a full

eleven months before the military-led coup that would follow in December. The occasion

was the arrival of the Queen's Baton in Fiji, the Commonwealth Games' equivalent to the

Olympic torch. The Shobna Chanel Dance Group, in collaboration with the RFMF Meke

Group, performed on the expansive lawn of the Government House in Suva before a

private audience including Prime Minister Qarase, other members of government, and

foreign dignitaries.294 Qarase's ministers had specifically requested Chanel's group—and

particularly their "fusion dance"—for this occasion, as they had several times previously

for other state functions.

The state's recruitment of the collaborative dance genre for the work of nation

making dates back to the traumatic events of May 2000 when Speight's civilian-led coup

deposed Fiji's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry (see chapter 3).

Although the coup was put down by Bainimarama and declared illegal, Chaudhry was

forced into snap elections in 2001 against Qarase, the head of the caretaker government.

293Notable local performances include the Third African Caribbean Pacific (APC) Summit in Nadi (2002),

the closing ceremony of the 12th South Pacific Games in Suva (2003), and the Pacific Human RightsAwards in Suva (2006). Notable international performances include the Eighth Festival of Pacific Arts inNew Caledonia (2000), the inaugural Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in India (2003), and the Fiji VisitorsBureau's "Talanoa Roadshow" in Australia (2006).

As this was a private ceremony for Suva's elite, my only option for entry was to arrive with themusicians and dancers on their bus and set up my camera under the band canopy. This gave me theopportunity to chat with Major Neumi Leweni, the director of the Army band that accompanied part of thecollaborative dance. Leweni would later become Bainimarama's mouthpiece after the December coup,making nightly appearances on the television news.

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Qarase's SDL party won the election and took the reigns of government for the five years

that followed. Qarase, himself a moderate ethnonationalist, launched a campaign of

"reconciliation" based, in part, on indigenous Fijian rituals of apology (matanigasau) and

conflict resolution (veisorosorovi) and buttressed by an explicitly Christian concept of

"unconditional forgiveness." In 2004, the weeklong Fiji independence celebration—

dubbed "Reconciliation Week" by Qarase—culminated with a public matanigasau

ceremony in Albert Park, Suva. In an apparent act of contrition, figures under

investigation for involvement in the 2000 coup—or their relatives or representatives—

offered a public apology to those victimized by the actions of Speight and his supporters;

none of the aggrieved MPs attended, however, and Indo-Fijians showed little interest in

the spectacle (Bhim007:114). Undeterred, Qarase declared 2005 to be the "Year of

Forgiveness" and launched a series of Ministry for Multiethnic Affairs-sponsored

educational workshops targeting the Indo-Fijian community.

In 2005, the campaign culminated with the drafting of the controversial

Promotion of Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill (RTU Bill), which sought to

promote national (that is to say, ethnic) reconciliation through the principles of

restorative justice. Modeled partly on the South African Truth and Reconciliation

Commission, the bill contained provisions for the amnesty of coup perpetrators as part of

a formula summed up by Qarase as "justice plus forgiveness and reconciliation, equals

peace."295 Although Qarase steadfastly denied that the bill would provide blanket

295This quote is from Qarase's speech in Parliament during the second reading of the RTU Bill on June 2,

2005. The text was reproduced in "A Plea for Restorative Justice," Fijilive, 17 June 2005,http://www.fijilive.com. Accessed Oct. 12, 2007.

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amnesty, the Indo-Fijian community including religious, professional, and political

organizations broadly condemned the proposed legislation. Chaudhry, then Leader of the

Opposition in Parliament, summed up the counter position in his yearend message printed

in The Fiji Times: "The government's determination to push through the highly

controversial Amnesty Bill has created deep divisions within the nation, and leaves

behind indelible impressions of an administration that backs lawless elements in

society."296 More critically, the introduction of the RTU Bill exacerbated tensions

between the government and the military forces, as the latter claimed that the amnesty

provisions threatened their ongoing prosecution of coup supporters and financers.297

Therefore, the "fusion dance" genre with its explicit juxtaposition of indigenous

Fijian and Indo-Fijian cultural symbols (and actual bodies) provided the SDL government

with a visible embodiment of national reconciliation and a timely counter-representation

for those who accused Qarase of fueling the nation's ethnic divide. As media coverage of

Chanel's group increased, SDL ministers were often quoted in praise of the cross-cultural

choreography. For example, Konisi Yabaki said of the group, "They are a perfect

example that, while we can maintain our respective cultural and traditional ways, there

are ways of incorporating them, allowing us the best of both worlds" (Rogogo 2002).

In 2005 at the firm suggestion of the Ministry for Multiethnic Affairs, each of the

five locations of the Fiji Indian Culture Centre changed its name to the "Multiethnic

296Mahendra Chaudhry, paid advertisement, "Taking stock of 2005 and looking to the future," The FijiTimes, 31 December 2005. Note his deliberate gloss of the RTU Bill as the "Amnesty Bill."297

The RFMF's official submission to the parliamentary select committee read in part, "The Bill is illconceived and is a recipe for internal conflict, unrest and violence. It is discriminatory and will breedethno-nationalism ... bring about despair, hopelessness and insecurity amongst the people as well aspromote greater racial division" (Bhim 2007: 127).

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Culture Centre" and adopted a new mandate stressing the equal representation of Fiji's

diverse ethnic groups. In keeping with the mandate, the Fiji Day culture show organized

by the Centre that year featured indigenous Fijian, Pacific Islander, Indian, and "Indian-

Fijian fusion" dances—all performed by the Centre's Indo-Fijian students—and a

Chinese dance performed by a Fiji Chinese troupe that liaisons with the Centre. Several

of the Centre's Indo-Fijian instructors have expressed their quiet disapproval of the

Ministry's influence over their curriculum.298 At the time, the Minister for Multiethnic

Affairs was George Shiu Raj, one of a minority of Indo-Fijian SDL members and the

only Indo-Fijian in the otherwise all-indigenous Fijian Cabinet. An Indo-Fijian dance

teacher employed by the Centre gave me the following account of Raj's influence:

We had the coup in 2000 and this thing had taken a priority, that you aresupposed to be blending in your cultures, you know, it's not separate ...it's OK for you to show your Indian culture, but you must have somethingthat shows both. So we decided to do fusion dances.... When George ShiuRaj became the Minister for Multiethnic Affairs, that's when the decisioncame down to us that we are supposed to be teaching more contemporarydances—don't totally focus on Indian only, start including other culturesalso.

Thus, as the contentious RTU Bill stalled in Parliament (along with other bills intended to

increase indigenous Fijian control of land and fishing waters), the government directly

298I derive the preceding information from my interview with Saras Goundar, the (Indo-Fijian) Director of

the Suva Branch of the Fiji Indian Culture Centre, now called the Suva Multiethnic Culture Centre. It isalso important to point out that the Ministry is a primary source of funding for the Centre, and much of theMinistry's influence owes to this fact. The Ministry for Multiethnic Affairs, as the government portfoliothat oversees Indo-Fijian issues, was itself known as the "Ministry for Indian Affairs" until 1993.299

These were the Qoliqoli Bill, which sought to restore indigenous Fijian ownership of traditional fishinggrounds currently controlled by the state, and the Indigenous Claims Tribunal Bill, which would establishlegal recourse and compensation for indigenous Fijians who successfully demonstrated that their mataqali-held land had been improperly sold prior to the Native Land Trust Act of 1944. Much of the area covered

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encouraged cross-cultural collaboration through the influence of its Ministry of

Multiethnic Affairs, and "fusion dance" became a staple item at state-sponsored events.

Simultaneously, through performances in the tourist industry and abroad, the "fusion

dance" projected the image of a harmonious, multiethnic Fiji to the international

community.

The January 2006 Government House performance, as the highlight of the state-

sponsored media event, featured a tight set of five choreographed, seamlessly-linked

dance sequences lasting a total of approximately sixteen minutes. Once Prime Minister

Qarase took his seat, the performance began with four young women from Chanel's

group attired in black with traditional magimagi (coconut fiber rope) tied around their

waists. The dancers performed in unison, emphasizing arm movements that derived

equally from Indian classical dance and Hawaiian hula. The music, played through PA

speakers, was the Tokelauan-language hit "Pate Pate" by the popular Auckland-based

band Te Vaka, an eclectic group of Pacific Islanders. As the piece concluded, the Army

Band launched into "Bula Maleya," a widely known example of sere ni cumu, the guitar

and ukulele-based popular song genre. Six indigenous Fijian male members of the RFMF

Meke Group entered the performance space. Dressed in typical meke dance attire—bare-

chested with salusalus (garlands) and long pandanus-leaf skirts—the dancers fit the

image of the Pacific Romance as they performed the vigorous meke iri (fan dance). In

two staggered rows, the men held palm leaf fans and moved with an athletic agility in the

by the legislation included desirable (and potentially lucrative) sites for tourism development. Opponents tothe bills, including the Fiji Labour Party and the military, claimed that the legislation threatened to hampersea access in the tourism industry and destabilize freehold land investment.300

Hula, of course, has a pan-Pacific appeal, and it is a popular item in Fiji's cultural centers and schools.

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manner of traditional meke, in which synchronous movements "emphasize collective

excellence, rather than individual achievement" (Goldsworthy 1998: 774).301 Midway

through the meke, the men were joined by the original four female dancers whose delicate

Indian/hula movements provided a striking contrast to the vigor of the men's

performance (see Figure 26). The third piece featured one of Chanel's students in a brief

solo performance of kuchipudi, a classical dance style associated with Telugu-speaking

South India. She wore the traditional sari-style dance attire, but a traditional Fijian masi

pattern adorned the fabric of her pallu and pleats (see Figure 27). The piece, performed to

Figure 26: Collaborative dance. Members of the Chand-RFMF Meke group perform at the GovernmentHouse. Suva, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

There are multiple types of meke genres, usually divided between men's and women's repertoires, inwhich the dance is only one aspect of a performance centered on a narrative text. In this sense, dancingmeke to sere ni cumu is untypical. Meke songs are usually accompanied by a small ensemble of lali ni meke(a small "slit drum" idiophone), derua (bamboo stamping tubes), and body percussion. Meke remains afixture of "traditional" ceremonies of exchange and social interaction, but performance contexts haveexpanded to include church events, school programs, tourist shows, and a variety official occasions rangingfrom sporting events to government meetings (Glamuzina 2007).

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prerecorded Karnatak music, emphasized nrtta, or abstract, non-narrative movements.

Upon her exit, three Indo-Fijian female dancers reappeared with large strips of brown

masi added to their costumes. The music transitioned to "Meda Butu," a neotraditional

meke song by Black Rose, as the women performed a piece in unison with movements

derived from women's meke and Indian dance styles, such as kathak. The women had

learned these meke dance movements from the male RFMF dancers. Finally, the men of

the RFMF Meke Group sprinted back into the performance space, forming two lines

roughly parallel with the Indo-Fijian dancers, and the kuchipudi dancer returned as well.

In an unexpected twist, the prerecorded music for the finale was the "world percussion"-

dominated techno hit of 2000, "Played-A-Live (the Bongo Song)" by the Danish pair

Safri Duo. As the men launched into a synchronized meke iri, the Indo-Fijian dancers—

Figure 27: Collaborative dance costume, Masi patterns displayed on the pallu of this Kuchipudiperformer in Chanel's group. Suva, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K. Miller.

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joined by the kuchipudi dancer—moved in formation among them, keeping a discreet

distance. The effect was visually harmonious, but emphasized a type of harmony born of

complement rather than union. At the close of the performance, the audience responded

with an appreciative applause before returning to tea and conversation.

Upon close analysis of this particular performance as a representative example of

the "fusion dance" genre, it appears that "fusion," as used here, is a misnomer, or at least

misleading. Although the indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian dancers share the

performance space, their interaction is limited, and rather than blending, the culturally

marked aspects of the choreography remain relatively discrete. Importantly, Chanel's

students do embody aspects of indigenous Fijian culture through their costuming and

dance movements, yet these details are largely overpowered by the inescapable presence

of the dancers' own ethnicities carried on their "racialized" bodies. There are at least two

factors in this particular performance that preserve the correlative relationship between a

dancer and the representation of his or her ethnicity. The first is that the RFMF Meke

Group dancers do not make any gestures toward Indo-Fijian culture: their costuming and

choreography remain exclusively representative of indigenous Fijian traditions. The

second factor is that the ethnic integrity of each group of dancers is underscored by their

gender: all of Chanel's Indo-Fijian dancers are female, while all of the RFMF Meke

Group dancers are male.

In this regard, it is interesting to note that both of the "sources" for this

collaboration—Indian dance styles and indigenous Fiijian meke—have their own

respective histories of gender-segregated performance: neither folk nor classical forms of

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Indian dance tend to intermix the sexes, and indigenous Fijian meke is typically divided

into men's and women's genres. In this sense, the collaborative dance represents each

ethnicity as gendered—the gentle, feminine (and "refined") Indo-Fijian, and the vigorous,

masculine (and "coarse") indigenous Fijian—and the lack of mutual engagement between

the two in the choreography reflects the gendered performance history of each group.302

Finally, the music that accompanies the dance sequence positions both sets of dancers

against various culture-localities. The Karnatak piece and the meke song ("Meda Butu")

represent Indo-Fijian and indigenous Fijian cultures respectively at their most traditional,

while the sere ni cumu ("Bula Maleya") suggests a postcolonial Fijian culture

interconnected with tourism.303 The choice of "Pate Pate" reflects a broader identification

with Oceania or, more specifically, Polynesia, while the concluding selection of the

"Bongo Song" remix provides an ethnically-neutral and globally modern sonic finale,

save for the prominent "tribal drums" that index indigenity. In essence, the Chanel-RFMF

collaborative dance is, in many ways, an innovative and creative piece of choreography,

but its representation of indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian relations ultimately emphasizes

coexistence over integration—a vision easily compatible with state's conception of

multiculturalism.

302I bracket here what could be an extensive gender analysis of this piece because the correlation between

gender and ethnicity—present in this performance—is not a consistent feature of the "fusion dance" genrein general. I saw other collaborative performances in which Indo-Fijian male dancers performed folkdances amidst a group that also included female indigenous Fijians performing women's meke. Still, thegender-ethnicity correlation in the present example invests the cross-cultural impact of the choreographywith a particular salience. Indigenous Fijian men and Indo-Fijian women are, generally, the "culturebearers" of their respective groups, and the matrimonial union of this pairing is far rarer than that betweenan Indo-Fijian man and an indigenous Fijian woman (Richmond 2003: 102). In this sense, the combinationof indigenous Fijian men and Indo-Fijian women in cross-cultural performance carries the greatest potentialto challenge existing concepts of ethnic relations.

303A staple of the guitar-ukulele band repertoire, "Bula Maleya" is a song of welcome that often greetstourists as they arrive at the airport or their resorts.

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But the wheels of history were already turning. Just three days prior to this

performance, army commander Bainimarama issued his first call for Qarase's

resignation, claiming that the SDL government was delaying the prosecution of coup

participants and dividing the nation through its proposed ethnonationalist legislation.

Following the SDL's re-election in May 2006, Bainimarama's threats grew more dire

until, on December 5, he initiated the military's "clean-up campaign," took over

government, and subsequently assumed the position of interim Prime Minister. During

his address to the nation on the day of the military takeover, Bainimarama claimed that

Qarase had "already conducted a silent coup through bribery, corruption and the

introduction of controversial bills."304 In September 2007, Bainimarama attempted to

justify his actions to the international community at the United Nations General

Assembly in New York. "Fiji has a coup culture," he explained, "a history of civilian or

military coups executed in the interests of a few, and based on nationalism, racism and

greed. To remove this coup culture and to commit to democracy and the rule of law,

policies which promote racial supremacy and further the interests of economic and social

elites must be removed once and for all."305 If we follow the claims of Bainimarama's

discourse, Qarase's appropriation of the "fusion dance" genre for the purposes of national

reconciliation appears as a disingenuous smokescreen, an act of symbolic violence in the

sense suggested by Pierre Bourdieu: a "gentle, invisible violence, unrecognized as such,

chosen as much as undergone..." (1990: 127). From this perspective, a representation of

304 "Voreqe Bainimarama's Press Statement," 5 December 2006, http://www.fijitimes.com/extras/TakeOverAddress.pdf (emphasis mine). Accessed December 5, 2006.

305Voreqe Bainimarama, address to the United Nations General Assembly, 28 September 2007. Excerpt offull transcript from Pacific Islands Report (Online): http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2007/October/10-01-speech.htm. (Emphasis mine.) Accessed October 16, 2007.

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ethnic relations in the form of cross-cultural performance generated by the citizenry (in

this case, individual choreographers) for the purposes of cultural education was co-opted

by the state to serve its own agenda and extend its own political life. It was, in the end,

too little, too late.

By the first anniversary of the December coup, Bainimarama and his "interim

administration" had failed to produce evidence of the SDL government's "corruption,"

but they stood by their claim that Qarase's ethnonationalism was taking Fiji down a

dangerous path. Beyond the introduction of his controversial legislation, critics accused

Qarase of tolerating ethnic chauvinism within the ranks of government, a perception

exacerbated by the 2006 merger of the SDL with the Conservative Alliance-Matanitu

Vanua (CAMV), an overtly pro-indigenous Fijian party with ties to Speight's power base.

Furthermore, several of Qarase's own ministers drew controversy for their racist remarks,

such as Adi Asenaca Caucau, Minister for Social Welfare, Poverty Alleviation, and

Women, who said in Parliament: "A priest warned me that we must keep a careful and

guarded watch over fellow Indo-Fijians because they are like weeds. They tend to push,

to grab and take over the land and the nation." Qarase himself was outspoken about his

Christian beliefs and his support for indigenous Fijian rights and socio-economic

advancement, but he chose his words more carefully.

Qarase's response to ethnic unrest spurred by the 2000 coup was to combine a

concept of reconciliation, informed by Christian principles and "Fijian custom," with

She said this in Fijian during a debate on July 28,2002; this translation is excerpted from Ganesh(2005: 240, his emphasis). In another example, Jone Navakamocea, the Minister for National Planning,called anew for a ban on the term "Indo-Fijian," echoing the earlier "identity theft" complaint of SenatorCakobau. Surprisingly, he made this plea in August 2006, a period otherwise marked by the post-electionoptimism of the multiparty cabinet.

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Mara's vision of multiculturalism based on the rhetoric of "accommodation." There were

two consequences of this synthesis. First, Qarase and his administration couched the

terms of reconciliation within the context of the taukei-vulagi relationship: the Indo-

Fijians were the (often ungrateful) "guests" and the indigenous Fijians the tolerant,

accommodating "hosts."307 Second, the "multiculturalism" that Qarase sought to promote

was inherently asymmetrical and predicated on an implied (and constitutionally

reinforced) indigenous Fijian paramountcy. In this light, the discourse of multiculturalism

successfully masked the numeric, economic, and political importance of Indo-Fijians by

relegating them to a cultural mosaic shared by a multitude of numerically less significant

ethnic groups. In other words, the propagation of the multiculturalism discourse tempered

the threat of biculturalism in Fiji.

In this respect, Qarase found the collaborative dance genre to be congruous with

his vision of multiculturalism. Although the choreography was often called a work of

"fusion," the government embraced it because it was not. The indigenous Fijian meke

dancers performed side-by-side with the Indo-Fijian dancers but made no choreographic

concessions to the latter's culture. It was the Indo-Fijian dancers who adopted the cultural

symbols of indigenous Fijian culture, although, as explained above, the overall effect was

one of coexistence, not integration. Knowing that nation making requires the control of

principal representations, Qarase and the SDL government were quick to seize the

307For example, Qarase nearly mimics Ravuvu's words above with this response made in Parliament to a

comment by an Indo-Fijian MP who disparaged the Fijian-dominated government: "To me and theGovernment, that remark is a gross and provocative insult. It was a racist attack on a community, which hasbeen tolerant and accommodating towards the needs of those who came to Fiji over 120 years ago in searchof a better life.... When insensitive remarks and gross insults are thrown at us as the 'i taukei' andlandowners, we will, as we must, take a stand and say enough is enough" (Chand 2005: 241 his emphasis).

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collaborative dance and redirect its meaning. The singular image of Fiji thus projected

was one of multiethnic harmony cohered by an assumed indigenous Fijian cultural and

political dominance.

Crossing the River: Indigenous Fijian Singers of the Hindi Repertoire

Critics of the multicultural paradigm, particularly as conceived and practiced in

Fiji, caution against the over-emphasis of "immutable," "primordial" cultural differences

and the concomitant neglect of other socio-economic factors affecting group conflict such

as class. Furthermore, multicultural policies, they claim, tend to focus on the easily

identifiable, superficial aspects of culture. Steven Ratuva, a political sociologist at the

University of the South Pacific, laments the situation in Fiji: "Multiculturalism simply

became a thin layer of film to camouflage the increasing ethnic segregation and

deepening socio-economic disparity" (1998: 67). Ratuva was writing about the state of

ethnic relations prior to the coups of 1987, but as demonstrated above, his words could

easily be applied to the more recent inter-coup period of 2000 to 2006.1 heard similar

statements from my field consultants, including the retired music educator and expert

musician, Satvik Dass:

Today, what they call multicultural promotion is very superficial.... Ithink that right from scratch, at the grassroots level, Fijians should betaught the Indian language, and Indians should be taught the Fijianlanguage. And if the Fijians are able to sing a Hindi song or perform aHindi dance, and likewise, the Indians perform the meke and otherthings—that is true multicultural promotion, that is what you could callnational reconciliation.

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The efforts of Chanel and other choreographers of the collaborative dance genre, in

which their (usually) Indo-Fijian students learn aspects of indigenous Fijian music and

dance, represent an important step in the process described by Dass.

However, this final section moves on to discuss a very different case study: the

minority of indigenous Fijians who perform the Hindi repertoire of folk and devotional

music. Although I heard of only a handful of such individuals during the course of my

fieldwork, several had achieved a relatively high profile on the local circuit of tambura

bhajan stage shows and in the Fiji-based Hindi music industry. Despite their negligible

numbers, I argue that an ethnographic focus on these individuals reveals important

insights into the broader social relationships of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians. As

Timothy Rice observes, every individual is ultimately a "thoroughly social and self-

reflexive being" elucidative of his or her cultural milieu (2003: 157). These indigenous

Fijian singers tend to speak fluent Fiji Hindi and identify as Hindu even as they move

between indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian performance contexts and genres. A key point

here is that their embrace of Hinduism and interest in Indo-Fijian music genres stems

from their lifelong "grassroots" interactions with Indo-Fijians in the periphery of their

Fijian villages or in the cities.

The general lack of cross-cultural musical experiments or borrowings in Fiji may

appear surprising, particularly to those familiar with the chutney phenomenon of Trinidad

and Tobago in the Caribbean. There, a popular dance-oriented hybrid of bawdy Bhojpuri

folk songs, Hindi film music, and calypso rhythms emerged during the 1980s. Called

"chutney" and, later, "chutney-soca," this genre quickly established itself as the "Indian"

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equivalent to the Afro-Caribbean calypso/soca, creating "a new basis for mutual

appreciation between the races" (Manuel 2000: 192; see also Myers 1998; Ramnarine

2001; Niranjana 2006). Caribbean chutney enjoyed a brief popularity in Fiji following the

local distribution of recordings by Trinidadian chutney pioneer Sundar Popo. Even

today, a chutney-soca will occasionally find its way onto Fiji's Hindi radio stations,

although some listeners take issue with the genre's thinly veiled sexual innuendo and

"degraded" dialect of Hindi.309

In general, Fiji lacks the high-profile national platforms for popular music

performance that contributed to the rise of chutney in the Caribbean, and spaces of

popular music consumption such as the nightclub remain ethnically (self-) segregated.

Certain musical groups that perform cover versions of Hindi film songs may incorporate

"local color" into their renditions, but rather than drawing on indigenous Fijian aesthetics,

they incorporate the rhythms of reggae, another popular Caribbean import. The exception

is George Soni, an Indo-Fijian musician now residing in the U.S., whose Bollywood-

tinged version of "Chulu Chululu," a traditional Fijian song, sold over 400,000 copies in

India.310 His 2005 release, Lelo, features five songs in Hindi and four in Fijian including

bilingual versions of the album's single, "Bula Bhangra."311 Like earlier multilingual

performers, particularly Ronald Jay, Soni conceives of his music as bridging the ethnic

308Three of Popo's Windsor Records recordings from the 1970s and 1980s were: Hot & Spicy, Hot &

Sweet, and Come Dance with the Champ. Although these appear to be legitimately distributed by Fiji'sProcera Music, it is possible that Popo, now deceased, was never aware that his music had spread to theSouth Pacific (Ramnarine, personal communication, 2006).309

Standard Hindi is the norm for Hindi broadcasts in Fiji, and non-standard dialects or variations,including (and especially) Fiji Hindi, remain controversial.310 "Musician Releases Album on Peace," The Fiji Times, 4 July 2005.

"Bula" is the traditional Fijian greeting while "bhangra" is a popular Punjabi folk dance. George Soni,Lelo, South Pacific Recordings Ltd. SPR CD57.

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divide and modeling racial harmony. As such, he was the sole "representative" of Indo-

Fijian culture on "We Are Fiji," Daniel Rae Costello's collaborative, multicultural, and

multilingual redo of Fiji's national anthem of 2005.312 However, Soni's efforts, while

important, represent the work of an individual and do not, as yet, reflect a larger trend in

cross-cultural musical performance.

The areas of Fiji with the greatest potential for grassroots, cross-cultural micro-

interactions between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians are the sugarcane districts of

central Vanua Levu (around Labasa) and western Viti Levu. In these areas, a decades-

long history of cooperation and mutual exchange between the two major ethnic groups

has fostered relationships that resist the ebb and flow of Fiji's racialized national politics.

As a group of indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian sugar mill workers in Ba in western Viti

Levu, exclaimed, "We don't give a damn about what's happening in Suva. We'll still be

in this place living our lives. There's no Indian and no Fijian here. We are all one!"313

Cohabitation in these areas has cultivated a mutual respect for and curiosity about the

religious practices and cultural histories of the other. Continuing traditions developed

during the indenture period, some Indo-Fijian Hindus practice puja rites for local, pre-

Christian Fijian ancestor deities such as Dakuwaqa (a shark-god) and Degei (a snake-

god). As discussed in chapter 5, many Hindus further identify Degei as Kaliya Nag, the

312Written and produced by Costello, a Fiji citizen with European ancestry, "We Are Fiji" was recorded

and released as a DVD project to celebrate and sustain the national unity generated by Fiji's victory at theRugby World Cup 7s in 2005. The song borrows the chorus from the English-language version of Fiji'snational anthem, "God Bless Fiji." The recording features a range of singers representing Fiji's variousethnicities, although, as demonstrated by Jennifer Cattermole, the recording is ultimately congruous withFiji's asymmetrical conception of multiculturalism with implied indigenous Fijian paramountcy (2007). WeAre Fiji, prod, by Daniel Rae Costello , 37 min., A Tango Multimedia Production, 2005, DVD.

As paraphrased by Katerina Teaiwa (2007: 226).

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snake king banished to a remote island by Krishna.314 The puja for Dakuwaqa or Degei,

however, is a marginal, relatively rare practice generally led by the same religious figures

who specialize in Devi (goddess) possession rituals of the "South Indian" variety.

Although I did not have the opportunity to observe the Dakuwaqa/Degei puja, field

consultants in Lautoka described the ritual as a propitiatory rite dominated by the

exchange of yaqona (kava) and cigarettes as prasdd (sanctified offerings). Indigenous

Fijians do not generally take part.315

Many indigenous Fijians in these areas speak Fiji Hindi in addition to Fijian,

enjoy watching Hindi films, and eat Indian curry at home. While this is common, a more

astonishing fact is that at the time of Fiji's 1996 Census, 866 indigenous Fijian

respondents identified themselves as Hindu.316 Although this number is statistically

negligible, it demonstrates the subtle influences of sugarcane district cohabitation on an

ethnic group for which Christianity is normally a fundamental and fiercely defended

aspect of cultural and personal identity. The concept of a Hindu indigenous Fijian in the

314As Kaplan points out, the collapsing of key religious narratives is a striking—if not always

successful—counter-strategy for nation making in a Fijian history dominated by national rituals ofsegregation and multiracialism. Her example is Harigyan Samalia, an Indo-Fijian mystic (and head of theIndia Fiji Girmit Council) who claimed, among other things, that Navosavakadua, a nineteenth-centuryindigenous Fijian leader who opposed British rule, was an incarnation of Krishna and that the femalefigurehead of the Syria, a wrecked indenture vessel, represented both Lakshmi (a Hindu goddess) and AdiSovanatabua (a female Fijian ancestral deity) (Kelly and Kaplan 2001: 137).

Donald Brenneis notes the "Hindu style" sacrifice of chickens for Dakuwaqa (1981: 225), but the onlydetailed description of this puja (to my knowledge) appears in Kelly's dissertation. Kelly's description ofthe ritual, which he identifies as Tamana puja—from the Fijian word for "father"—conforms with thatgiven to me in Lautoka: an Indo-Fijian pujari serves as a medium for Degei (or Kaliya Nag), who receivesthe devotees' petitions or, in some cases, cures them of disease. Kava and cigarettes—items usuallyassociated with ritual pollution in Hindu theology—serve as prasad, and Fijian artifacts including carvings,shell necklaces, tabua (sperm whale teeth), and lali (slit-drum) accompany the rite (Kelly 1988a:114-118).

Most of this number (63 percent) identified as "Sanatan." Three hundred and twenty-four indigenousFijians identified as Muslim. Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Population by Religion and by Race-1996Census of Population," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj/Social/religion_stats.htm. AccessedDecember 22, 2005.

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national imagination is, at best, embryonic, and isolated images of indigenous Fijians

taking part in a Hindu puja or firewalking ceremony surface occasionally in the media as

curiosities. During his research in the early 1970s, Ian K. Somerville noted indigenous

Fijian participation in several Ramayan mandalis in western Viti Levu. In at least one

case, the young men were praised by their pracharak for showing "a great deal more

enthusiasm than the Indians" (1986: 144).317

While I did not come across any Ramayan mandalis with indigenous Fijian

members, I did have the opportunity to meet, record, and interview Juniya Noah, an up-

and-coming indigenous Fijian bhajaniyd, or singer of Hindu devotional songs. I first

heard Noah sing at a celebration marking the final day of Krishna Janmashtami

(Krishna's birthday) in a suburb of Lautoka. The event focused on the singing and

explication of various texts concerning Krishna, including Vishnu Purana, Brij Bilas, and

Prem Sagar. Late in the evening, the officiating pracharak halted the proceedings in

anticipation of midnight, the hour of Krishna's birth, at which time he and his mandali

would complete the ritual. As they awaited this hour, a group of devotees formed a tight

circle and began singing kirtans in praise of Krishna; Noah was among them.

317I focus here on Hindu indigenous Fijians at the expense of analyzing the "reverse" scenario: Christian

Indo-Fijians. I have made this choice for several reasons. Although they are a much larger group—over20,000 in number or 6 percent of the Indo-Fijian population—Christian Indo-Fijians often worship in"Indian churches" separate from indigenous Fijian devotees of the same faith. The practice of Christianity,therefore, does not always challenge entrenched patterns of ethnic segregation. In addition, some Christianindigenous Fijians complain that the Indo-Fijian practice of Christianity retains too many "Hindu elements"to be truly Christian (Herbst 1976: 229). Finally, the case of Hindu indigenous Fijians is particularlyinteresting from a socio-political point of view because it moves in a direction counter to the hegemonicforce of Christianity in the Pacific—there is no obvious social pay-off for indigenous Fijians who identifyas Hindus. Source of statistics: Fiji Island Bureau of Statistics, "Population by Religion and by Race-1996Census of Population," Fiji Government, http://www.statsfiji.gov.fj/Social/religionstats.htm. AccessedDecember 22, 2005.

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Noah delighted his fellow devotees by singing a kirtan to the tune of "Dafli Wale

Dafli Baja, " a popular Hindi film song from the late 1970s, before singing a second

kirtan in a more "traditional" style.318 Following requests for a third song, Noah launched

into a hori (hori), a short-format or auxiliary genre normally associated with the Phagua

(Holi) season (see chapter 6). Due to the preponderance of Krishna-themed songs in the

Phagua repertoire, certain short-format genres such as hori and rasiya are occasionally

performed during Krishna Janmashtami. Noah's hori drew on the theme of Shiva's

flower garden, a rich metaphoric terrain in which different types of flowers stand in for

various human characteristics:

Cello dekh ai bhola ki phul bagiyaBela bhi boya cameld bhi boyaEk nahi boya andrkali

Come, let's see Shiva's flower gardenHe has planted (zambac) jasmine and also (grandiflorum) jasmineBut he did not plant any pomegranite!

Noah performed this hori in a leader-chorus style, much like the kirtan format, and the

devotees sitting around him raised their voices with the contagious felicity characteristic

of Phagua (see Figure 28). From behind the harmonium, Noah encouraged a young man

to rise and perform a brief, improvised folk dance, which he executed in a mock-filmi

style that elicited howls of laughter. As he sang, Noah revealed a comfortable command

of the Indo-Fijian "local folk" aesthetic, particularly in terms of vocal timbre. Whereas

318"Dafli Wale Dafli Baja" ("Drummer, play your drum") is from the film Sargam (1979).

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indigenous Fijian vocal timbre tends to be open and relaxed, Noah has mastered the

preferred "Indian" vocal timbre, which is constricted and nasal. As Noah would explain

Figure 28: Noah Juniya sings hori Krishna Janmashtmi celebration. Lautoka, Fiji, 2006. Photo by K.Miller.

to me later, "If you put me on cassette and played it for an Indian guy, he'd never know

that a Fijian guy was singing."

Noah represents a vanguard minority of well-known indigenous Fijian singers of

the Hindu repertoire that also includes Iliaisa Seru from Labasa and Male Sadhu from the

Tavua area of western Viti Levu. These singers follow an earlier generation of indigenous

Fijian performers who moved between Fijian, Hindi, and English repertoires and often

recorded bilingual or trilingual cassettes for release in the local music industry. For

example, Saimone Vuatalevu, one of Fiji's most successful songwriter-musicians,

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stunned the local Indo-Fijian community in 1973 by winning the Fiji Sangeet Sitara (a

talent contest in Indian music) for his rendition of a popular Hindi film song. He followed

this achievement by dedicating six months in 1976 to the study of Hindi in New Delhi,

India (Singh 1986). Other prominent indigenous Fijian singers to record in Hindi include

Seci Fly Banuve and Jimmy Subhaydas, who is of mixed indigenous Fijian and Indo-

Fijian parentage.

Yet contemporary indigenous Fijian crossover singers such as Noah, Seru, and

Sadhu distinguish themselves from their predecessors by moving beyond the secular,

romantic themes of the Bollywood repertoire to become specialists of the Hindu bhakti

repertoire of tambura bhajans and kirtans. As such, they tend to self-identify as Hindus,

study the epic and Puranic literature, follow Hindu dietary restrictions, and worship at

pujas where they fraternize with other (Indo-Fijian) devotees. Although he makes his

living driving a bus, Sadhu has made a CD recording of Ram-themed kirtans and tambura

bhajans released by South Pacific Recordings (SPR) and is a frequent participant in

singing competitions.319 In fact, the local music industry actively promotes these

indigenous Fijian bhajaniyds through recordings and the sponsorship of bhajan muqdblds

(live, competitive stage shows). For example, Procera Music, under the direction of

Mohammed Akief, organized very successful competitions between Seru and Sadhu in

Suva and Lautoka and even toured Seru and Noah overseas for stage shows in New

319

Male Sadhu, Bhajans of Male Sadhu, South Pacific Recordings Ltd. SPR CD73-364H-374H.

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Zealand. The spectacle of two indigenous Fijian singers in a bhajan competition has

proven to be extremely popular in the Indo-Fijian community.

A brief biographical sketch of Noah based on my interviews suggests that the

phenomenon of indigenous Fijian crossover singers may satisfy the critics of

multiculturalism in Fiji, who seek cross-cultural exchange at the "organic," grassroots

level of micro-interactions among the citizenry. Noah, a tall, slender, soft-spoken young

man in his mid-twenties, identifies himself as Hindu, speaks Fiji Hindi fluently, and is

literate in Standard Hindi. He grew up in a small Fijian village situated in the sugarcane

district to the east of Labasa on Vanua Levu. From about the age of seven on his own

initiative, Noah began to attend the weekly Ramayana recital held in the neighboring

"Indian settlement." He said of his natal village, "This was a small village, and there were

seventy-two Indians right around. We had good relations with them; they would come to

our house, we would go there. There was no problem there. My father and mother would

let me go; my mother was so happy that I could sing." Through participating in the

Ramayan mandali, Noah learned to sing the epic's caupdis and dohds; he was also a

quick study of the kirtans performed during the kava session that followed the recital. He

320Regarding the local music industry, piracy in the age of the compact disc has taken a serious toll on

Fiji's two most-established recording companies, SPR and Procera. SPR in particular has drasticallyreduced its number of new releases, opting instead to expand its retail storefronts to include DVD rentalsand electronics sales. Most new Hindi (Indo-Fijian) recordings are released by Procera, which features acatalogue of local recordings roughly divided between Fiji-language (60 percent) and Hindi-language (40percent). However, the same technological advancements that have enabled the plague of pirate recordingshave also spawned several legitimate home-based recording companies that produce local recordings(usually of live stage shows) at minimal production costs. These outfits, which include Super DigitalRecordings and Audio Design Solutions, distribute their releases at a reduced price through grassrootsnetworks in addition to music retail stores. This new crop of home-based record labels provides youngerand less-established Indo-Fijian singers with the opportunity to make their first recordings and break intothe local music scene. Information in this section derived from interviews with Ravindra Patel (Director,SPR), Akief (Managing Director, Procera), and Nilesh Chandra (co-founder, Audio Design Solutions).

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recalled, "My Indian friends helped me learn how to sing.... They said that Sarasvati is

with me all of the time." As he grew older, Noah taught himself to play the harmonium

and expanded his repertoire through the meticulous study of recordings available through

the local cassette industry. He learned the tambura bhajan, lok geet ("folksong"), ghazal,

and qawali genres. Additionally, Noah's insatiable appetite for Indo-Fijian music led him

to learn various drumming traditions, including dholak, tdssd (high-pitched kettle drum),

and dhappala (frame drum). In this respect, it appears that Noah's ethnicity grants him

access to a range of Indo-Fijian performance repertoires normally marked by

subethnicity. For example, he moves freely between the "North Indian" Sanatani tradition

of Ramayana recitation and the "South Indian" domain of dhappala performance for the

firewalking ritual. Noah is best known as a bhajaniyd, however, and has participated in

over twenty singing competitions, holding his own against Ashok Kumar, Balram, and

other "bhajan kings." As indicated by his Krishna Janmashtami appearance above, the

Indo-Fijian community receives Noah's performances with enthusiasm, and he reports a

degree of support from the indigenous Fijian community as well, including his own

Christian family members. "My family supports me," he said, "whenever I'm in

competition, they always come and listen to me.... I travel all over and the Fijians come

and support me. If one or two are there, soon the whole koro [village] will be there. They

are very happy that I can sing that kind of song."

Therefore, in the context of nation making, Noah's command of the Hindu song

repertoire represents a type of cross-cultural performance generated "from below": a

"natural" outcome of intersecting ethnically-defined social networks in spaces beyond the

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reach of the state. Unlike the choreographers of the collaborative dance genre discussed

above, the indigenous Fijian bhajaniydas did not deliberately set out to model an

alternative vision of ethnic relations in Fiji. Nonetheless, the symbolic impact of an

indigenous Fijian singer not only adopting, but mastering the language, aesthetics, and

performance style of an Indo-Fijian vocal genre poses a serious challenge to the vision of

multiculturalism championed by the state in which race corresponds directly to cultural

expression. Nevertheless, although indigenous Fijian bhajaniyds "cross cultures," they do

not create a new "cross-cultural genre"—Noah brings nothing "Fijian" to his

performance of a hori or tambura bhajan apart from his racialized body. An

ethnonationalist government, such as Qarase's SDL, would find very little to exploit in

this form of cross-cultural performance, which is, in essence, a complete transference. On

the contrary, it raises old fears of Indo-Fijian political and cultural domination, the same

fears that fueled the coups of 1987 and 2000. It is, ultimately, not the government, but the

local music industry that promotes these indigenous Fijian singers, and the motivation is

not political, but economic.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have examined Indo-Fijian cultural performance at the level of

the nation-state through an exploration of the role of cross-cultural performance in the

processes of cultural representation and nation making. In particular, I have focused on

the interplay between "top-down" and "bottom-up" forces in the shaping of national

imaginaries, that is to say, the sometimes-competing and sometimes-complementary

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efforts of the state and its citizenry to author national identity. To this end, I have focused

on two case studies of cross-cultural performance that I observed during the "inter-coup

years" (2000-2006), a period dominated by increasing tensions between the SDL

government and the Fiji military. The first case study centers on a collaborative dance

genre (often referred to as "fusion dance") in which indigenous Fijian dance styles

(particularly meke) combine with Indo-Fijian dance styles (usually classical) in a single

choreographed piece. In some cases, actual members of each ethnic group participate; in

others, a single ethnic group of dancers represents multiple ethnicities through costuming,

choreography, and choice of accompanying music. The second case study turns to a

lesser-known but equally compelling phenomenon: the small number of indigenous Fijian

singers who specialize in the Hindi folk and Hindu devotional song repertoire. Hailing

from areas where indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians demonstrate relatively close

relations, these individuals tend to identify as Hindu, speak fluent Fiji Hindi, and

reproduce exactly the "local folk" style of Indo-Fijian music. My particular questions

regarding these case studies are political and ask how the nation-state is represented and

by whom: Why, during a particular historical moment, did the SDL government seize

upon one form of cross-cultural performance but not the other? And what does the state's

appropriation of this performance genre reveal about the vision of nationhood that the

SDL government was attempting to propagate?

The rarity of both case studies, as well as the depth of their impact, owes to the

persistent social segregation of indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, reinforced by

mutually-held ethnic stereotypes and a range of cultural differences including language

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use, educational patterns, and religious practices. Since Fiji's independence, the state has

responded to its internal and often unruly ethnic divide by promoting multiculturalism,

initially as evidence that Fijian leadership was ready to self-govern, and later as a

counter-narrative to "coup culture." And yet Fiji's concept of multiculturalism has always

demonstrated internal asymmetries that guarantee cultural and political indigenous Fijian

paramountcy, both by implication and constitutional decree. In this respect the

collaborative dance genre, in order to live up to its "fusion" epithet, must break from the

compartmentalizing narrative of multiculturalism that can be read "intertextually" across

various domains in Fiji—the "Indo-Fijian Gallery" of the Fiji Museum, the "Curry

Night" of weekly resort entertainment, and the "Indian Night" of the regional festival

schedule. In my analysis, the collaborative dance genre fails to complete this break,

instead reifying a vision of ethnic relations that emphasizes harmonic coexistence over

integration. For Qarase's SDL government, the appeal (and the safety) of the "fusion

dance" genre was specifically that it was not a fusion: each ethnic group remains

relatively discrete in the choreography and each has its place. In this way, the dance is

congruous with the Fijian nationalist paradigm of multiculturalism that assumes the

dominance of an "unadulterated" Indigenous Fijian culture. Under pressure from the

military, the government appropriated the "bottom-up" vision of reconciliation developed

by individual choreographers for its own official, "top-down" national imaginary, which

it wielded, allegedly, as symbolic violence. Meanwhile, the second case study, the

indigenous Fijian "crossover" singers—another bottom-up, grassroots phenomenon—

offers a serious challenge to the multicultural paradigm by rupturing (completely) the

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correlative relationship between the ethnically-marked performer and the "culture" that

he or she represents through performance. Furthermore, the superseding culture in this

case is decidedly Indo-Fijian, so it comes as no surprise that the SDL government would

have very little to gain through association with these singers. Although no new "cross-

cultural genre" is actually created through this cross-cultural performance (since the

indigenous Fijian singers simply reproduce existing Indo-Fijian performance styles and

genres), these singers may be the conduits of a different sort of reconciliation, a

grassroots reconciliation long delayed in Fiji based on genuine cultural exchange through

micro-interactions.

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Chapter 9. Place and Between: Music of Indo-Fijian Twice Migrants in the Pacific Rim

In October 2006 after spending a full year in Fiji, I followed the trajectory of

Indo-Fijian migration to Auckland, New Zealand, one of several Pacific Rim metropols

with significant immigrant populations. One evening following a Ramayana recital, I

found myself in conversation with two mandali members, cousins, both of whom were in

their forties and had migrated to New Zealand in the last decade. Recalling his youth in

Fiji one said, "When we were young children, we knew where all of our relatives were.

An aunt lived at the corner, an uncle down the road. We were all together. Now, we are in

Auckland, an uncle is in Canada, a grandmother is in Australia." The other man replied,

"It is like our great-grandfathers. When they came from India they left family behind.

Remember, grandfather had a brother in Calcutta?" Thus, through the pain of dislocation,

these men had little difficulty identifying their own experience of migration with that of

their girmitiya forebears. Based on Parminder Bhachu's coinage—liberally interpreted—

these men are "twice migrants," representative members of an ethnic group that first

migrated from India to Fiji, and then, generations later, moved once more from Fiji to a

tertiary location in the Pacific Rim (1985). Indo-Fijian academics, such as Brij V. Lai and

Kavita Nandan, prefer the term "twice banished," which stresses the push factors of Indo-

Fijian emigration (particularly the land lease issue and political marginalization) and

collapses the contemporary migrant's experience, once again, with the indentured

laborer's "exile" of a century before and Ram's "banishment" during antiquity as

described in the narrative of the Ramayana. Based on the continuous, high rate of

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emigration, it appears that most Indo-Fijians have surrendered their search for Rdmrdj in

Fiji, seeking instead to end their "exile" in the greener pastures of New Zealand,

Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Following chapter 8, which examined the relationship between cultural

performance and ethnic relations at the level of the nation-state in Fiji, this chapter

follows Indo-Fijian musical performance into the "Western" urban centers of the Pacific

Rim where many of the musical practices described thus far continue to structure the

lives of Indo-Fijian twice migrants in their new locales. Through an ethnographic focus

on the Indo-Fijian community of Auckland, New Zealand, I analyze and interpret the

effects of secondary migration on the cultural phenomena that I have concluded to be

central to the (Hindu) Indo-Fijian experience in Fiji: 1) the concept and practice of

Hinduism (i.e. two-caste, bhakti-oriented Sanatan Dharm, centered on Tulsidas'

Ramayana, but demonstrative of the influences of an emerging "universal Hinduism"); 2)

the issue of subethnicity (i.e. distinctions between Hindus and Muslims or "North

Indians" and "South Indians" within the greater Indo-Fijian "community"); 3) the notion

of a musical practice's "viable authenticity" (i.e. the perceived efficaciousness of

aesthetic and referential elements drawn from "local folk music," Hindi film music, and

classical Indian music); and 4) the issues of self- and cultural identity (i.e. a sense of

belonging to a place, community, or nation-state). By expanding my focus to include

points of secondary migration around the Pacific Rim, the greater pattern of Indo-Fijian

transnational networks comes into view, interconnected through a latticework of travel,

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capital flow, and communications, all of which have accelerated through increased access

to the internet and the "populating" of cyberspace.

As discussed in chapter 2,1 use the term "diaspora" to refer specifically to the

movement of people across borders and through transnational networks. While Fiji and

New Zealand are certainly nodes in the "South Asian diaspora" or the "Hindu diaspora,"

the people who embody these identity markers may reveal surprising or even

contradictory allegiances to multiple localities developed and sustained through the

consumption (and reinterpretation) of transnational media. In this respect, I find the

writing of anthropologist James Clifford to be particularly relevant to the Indo-Fijian

situation. Clifford argues for a vision of diaspora that positions "homeland" as an

important, but not primary, node in a complex network of places and relationships. From

this perspective, "homeland" is conceived "not as something simply left behind, but as a

place of attachment in a contrapuntal modernity" (Clifford 1994: 311). In other words,

"Decentered, lateral connections may be as important as those formed around a teleology

of origin/return ... and a shared, ongoing history of displacement, suffering, adaptation,

or resistance may be as important as the projection of a specific origin" (ibid.: 306).

"Contrapuntal modernity" accurately captures the series of "decentered, lateral

connections" comprised by the Indo-Fijian transnational community: modern India (and,

more importantly, the India of the imagination), the Fiji Islands, and the various locales

of settlement in New Zealand, Australia, and North America. These competing, multiple

sites of attachment challenge the traditional emphasis on a "doubled relationship" or

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"dual loyalty" espoused by transnational/diaspora theorists (see for example Lavie and

Swedenburg 1996).

Beyond the study of a series of interconnected sites, however, transnational

research involves the conception of each site as thoroughly transnational, or "translocal"

(Appadurai 1996). The unit of study, according to Ulf Hannerz, is "a network of sites,

and parts of one's ethnography may have to be between these sites, somehow

deterritorialized" (1998: 247; emphasis in the original). In Aradhana Sharma and Akhil

Gupta's summation, "The key advantage that the frame of transnationalism brings to the

study of states is that it forces us to rethink the triad "state-territory-people" and the

presumed symmetry of its constituent parts" (2006: 22). To explore one example, India,

one of the world's fastest growing economic powers, has increasingly turned to the

affluent members of its diaspora (Non-resident Indians—NRI—and People of Indian

origin—PIO) as a source for investment capital. India has reached out to Indo-Fijians

(and others of similar heritage in Africa and the Caribbean) through "roots tourism"

packages and the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas conference. Additionally, the

government of India emerged as a relatively strong advocate of Indo-Fijian rights during

the political crises of 1987 and 2000 (see also Voigt-Graf 2004: 185-88). More recently,

India has agreed to invest expertise and capital into Fiji's ailing sugar industry, a gesture

made possible through an improved political relationship between the two nation-states.

Following the lead of the authors quoted above, I have approached Fiji itself as a

transnational site, as emigration into the Pacific Rim is by no means a requirement for

Indo-Fijians to live transnational lives. Yet as described below, the conceptualization of

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Fiji as a translocation does not undermine its salience as an actual place of attachment,

particularly for those who have emigrated. Indeed, one of the central contradictions of

transnational studies is the tension between the very real emotional, financial, and

familial ties that people develop to a particular place and the actions that they take in their

daily lives to challenge the fixity of cartographic space. In the case of Indo-Fijians,

attachments are, once again, contrapuntal: multiple, simultaneous, and variously

imaginative.

The bulk of this chapter, divided between two sections, centers on my analyses of

musical performances by Indo-Fijians now settled in Auckland, New Zealand, where I

conducted fieldwork during October 2006. Following a brief account of Auckland's Indo-

Fijian community in terms of settlement history, social organization, and religious

practice, I turn to the performance of various musical genres previously discussed—

particularly the Ramayana recital—which require reassessment in the new context of

displacement. Specifically, I argue that Indo-Fijian twice migrants in the multicultural

urban terrain of Auckland develop a sense of cultural identity that emphasizes their Fijian

roots, particularly in opposition to the long-established "subcontinental Indian"

immigrant communities, and that musical performance lies at the center of this

positioning. I follow this analysis with an examination of Indo-Fijian twice migrants'

reception and reimagining of transnational media derived from India. In particular, I

interpret the phenomenal popularity of a Bhojpuri-language VCD series in which Indo-

Fijian consumers recognized certain aspects of their own culture. Contrary to the

encounter with actual subcontinental Indians in Auckland, the wide circulation of these

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recordings and, more importantly, the incorporation of their melodies into local folk and

devotional music reveal a sense of fellowship with rural India, which symbolizes the

girmitiya roots of Indo-Fijian identity. However, I begin this chapter with an overview of

Indo-Fijian emigration, including its impetuses, trajectories, impact on Fiji, and forging

of the twice migrant.

From Immigrant to Emigrant: Indo-Fijians as "Twice Migrants "

The geographer Carmen Voigt-Graf estimates that approximately 150,000 Indo-

Fijians have emigrated since independence, meaning that nearly one-third of all Indo-

Fijians now reside outside of Fiji (2004: 181). The anecdotal evidence supporting this

figure is strong, and I can say with little exaggeration that nearly every Indo-Fijian that I

met in Fiji claimed to have a relative living overseas. Carolyn Henning Brown made the

same observation as early as 1975, just five years after independence (1978: 305). At a

fire walking puja in Lautoka, I asked the organizer about the spiritual motivations of the

participating devotees. His response came as little surprise: "Some pray for good marks

on exams, some pray for better job opportunities, and some pray for a permanent

residence overseas. And many have succeeded." Statistically speaking, Indo-Fijian

emigration has remained steady since independence, with notable spikes after the 1987

and 2000 coups.321 According to the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, Indo-Fijians made up an

321A study conducted by Fiji-based geographers Rajesh Chandra and Nand Kishore Chetty determined that

the pre-coup (1980-1986) annual average of 2,640 migrants (including all ethnic groups) doubled duringthe post-coup period (1987-1990) to 5,674 (1998: 70).

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average of 89.4 percent of annual migrants between 1988 and 1995; the remainder was

divided between indigenous Fijians and "others."

Two interrelated narratives account for the phenomenon of Indo-Fijian

emigration. The first, primarily political, describes the personal violence and property

damage that accompanied the coups, the (ethno)politically driven non-renewal of land

leases, pro-indigenous affirmative action policies in education and employment, and the

constitutionally-enforced paramountcy of indigenous Fijian rule—all factors that lead

many Indo-Fijians to claim the status of "second-class citizens." The second narrative,

primarily economic, describes the "brain drain" of Indo-Fijian skilled workers and

professionals including medical specialists, teachers, engineers, and other technical

specialists. For example, Manoranjan Mohanty, another geographer at the University of

the South Pacific, claims that Fiji lost over 3,800 professionals and technical specialists

between 2000 and 2006, a figure that "represents over half of Fiji's stock of middle to

high level workers" (Field 2006: 23).323

During my fieldwork in Fiji just before the Ram Naumi festival in April, a

Lautoka-based pracharak named Kamlesh informed me that he was planning to

immigrate to Auckland, New Zealand. "There is no future-making in Fiji," he explained.

"The cost of living is very high, and when political issues arise, it is very hard." Fitting

the common pattern of chain migration, he planned to migrate in advance of his family

322Average based on figures provided by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, which appear in Naidu (1996:22).

Regarding indigenous Fijian emigration, particularly with resettlement in the United States, see Scott 2003.323

Other empirical studies that analyze the socio-political and economic factors behind Indo-Fijianemigration include Chetty and Prasad (1993), Dutt et al., (1997), Chandra and Chetty (1998), S. Lal (1998),and Sharma (2001).

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via a work permit as a first step towards establishing permanent residency. Although

Lautoka was losing another trained religious leader and musician, Kamlesh told me that

he looked forward to preaching the Ramayana and singing in bhajan competitions in

Auckland. "If god is with me, I will succeed in New Zealand," he said, "then I will say

goodbye to Fiji." He quickly added, "But still I will visit Fiji, I love my Fiji." Kamlesh

was one of several field consultants that claimed to be on the verge of emigrating, while

still more complained about the "cultural brain drain" created by the musicians, dancers,

and religious leaders who had already left.

The migration of people between Fiji and the Pacific Rim is only one facet of the

transnational networks—both economic and cultural—that link these locations and

"move" in both directions, however. For example, the loss of skilled workers and

intellectual capital engendered by Indo-Fijian emigration has found partial redress

through the corresponding rise in remittances, which by some accounts have increased by

500 percent since 2000.324 T-shirts reading "San Francisco" or "Brisbane" are a common

sight in Fiji, and I recall listening to a qawali singer whose harmonium displayed small

Canadian flag decals among the glittering stickers of Sarasvati and the Sanskrit "Om."

Transnational cultural flows between Fiji and the locales of secondary migration interlink

with older flows originating from India that, as described earlier in this dissertation, date

back to the 1920s. These include the movement of people—Hindu and Muslim

324

Mohanty reached this figure based on estimates that put the total remittances for 2004 close to $450million FJD ($272 million USD), second only to foreign exchange earnings through tourism. Source:"500pc Growth, Says Expert," The Fiji Times, 24 November 2005, p. 4. This remittance figure led PrimeMinister Laisenia Qarase to suggest, controversially, that the "brain drain" was actually good for Fiji'seconomy. Critics countered that the economic influx of remittances was illusory because the capitalappeared to be redirected toward consumables rather than locally invested. Source: "Brain Drain Not Good:TPFA," FijiLive.com, 27 October 2006. Accessed on same date.

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missionaries, music instructors, well-known performers, and students—in both directions.

More importantly, these linkages include the flows of media, and as demonstrated in

chapters 6 and 7, none has been more influential on Indo-Fijian music than "Bollywood,"

the Hindi film music industry.

According to the Chandra-Chetty study based on migration records dating to

1995, the choice of host-country destination of Indo-Fijian twice migrants appears as

follows: Australia (34 percent), United States (23.9 percent), Canada (22.7 percent), New

Zealand (15.7 percent), and others (3.7 percent) (Chandra and Chetty 1998: 72).325

Evidence suggests that the United States is a first choice for many emigrants, although

many choose Australia and New Zealand because of their proximity to Fiji, relatively

liberal immigration policies, and need for skilled labor.326 Most of these locales follow

the settlement pattern described below for twice migrants in Auckland, New Zealand,

including the forming of ethnic clusters, the establishment of specialized retail stores and

places of worship, and the founding of ethnic organizations. Many of these organizations

325The "other" category includes the United Kingdom and various other locales; the number relocating to

India or Pakistan is either nil or negligible.A recent article claims that 220,000 Fiji citizens entered the United States' worldwide "Green Card"

lottery in the sample year of 2002 (Field 2006: 23). Of course, the number that successfully migrates to theU.S. on an annual basis is far less, but one unofficial estimate (probably inflated) puts the total Indo-Fijianpopulation in this country around 60,000. This figure derives from an estimate of the total number of"Fijians" living in the U.S. made by Nick Khelawan, president of the National Association of FijiAmericans, correlated with the average percentage of emigrants who are Indo-Fijian (Khelawan's figureappears in Berne 2005). Most Indo-Fijians have settled on the west coast, particularly in Los Angeles, LasVegas, Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. An accurate census of Indo-Fijians settled inPacific Rim nation-states is often difficult to glean. Canada is home to an estimated 40,000 Indo-Fijians,most of whom reside in the Vancouver area (Mall 1997:314). Voigt-Graf also estimates 40,000 Indo-Fijians for Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane (2005: 371). The 2006 New Zealandcensus recorded 37,746 people who claimed Fiji as their place of birth, and, again, about 90 percent ofthese are likely to be Indo-Fijian. More details on New Zealand immigration follow below.

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are branches of religious and cultural organizations based in Fiji, such as the T.I.S.I.

Sangam and the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha.

As described below, the cultural and musical lives of Indo-Fijian immigrants tend

to follow precedents established in Fiji, including the launching of annual carnivals (such

as the "Fiji Festival" and "Muslim Carnival" in Hayward, California), large-scale public

celebrations (for Fiji's independence day or Diwali), and community-based, three-day

weddings. Most Hindu households will display the red jhandd (flag), and the Sanatani

ritual calendar remains highly relevant to devotees' lives. In 2007, the Indo-Fijian

community of the San Francisco Bay Area held its first Faag Sammelan, an evening

gathering of singing for the Holi festival. Fiji-style qawali and tambura bhajan remain

staples of competitive stage shows, and the weekly domestic rites of the Ramayan

mandali continue to bring devotees together on Tuesdays and Saturdays. India-based

transnational media, such as Bollywood music, retain a place of prominence in the

cultural lives of Indo-Fijians, particularly the youth. However, one of my arguments in

this chapter is that, here too, Indo-Fijian twice migrants experience these transnational

cultural products in ways that are often mediated, filtered, or transformed by their

passage "through" Fiji.

In December 2006, an exhibit titled "Chutney Generations" opened at the

Liverpool Regional Museum in Sydney, Australia, for a three-month run with the goal of

"presenting some of the losses, gains, mergers and new creations of the Australian-Fiji-

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Indian community" (Chand 2007:132).327 The exhibit included a "farming corner,"

complete with actual stocks of sugarcane, cane-cutting tools, and a mat made out of

fertilizer bags (used for sugarcane and ubiquitous in Fiji); a musical instrument display

that featured a dholak and verses of a "girmit song" composed by Divakar Prasad of

Brisbane, Australia; and several other displays that explored wedding rituals, kava

consumption, and cooking. The exhibit also featured a public forum on "Hybrids of

Culture and Identity in Multicultural Sydney" and a live performance that included a

Ramayan mandali singing a chautal (Holi song) and an elderly women's group singing

the lyrics of an Indo-Caribbean "chutney" song to a musical blend of Fijian meke and a

Bollywood hit. The exhibit, in other words, presented a creative but relatively mundane

collection of artifacts, images, and cultural practices that offered a realistic representation

of actual Indo-Fijian experiences and everyday lives. The contrast with the Fiji

Museum's Indo-Fijian Gallery in Suva is striking. As discussed in chapter 8, the

representation of Indo-Fijian culture in the Gallery emphasizes Indian culture—imported,

Sanskritized, and tunelessly classical. It is in Australia, a locale of secondary migration,

that we find the Indo-Fijian community claiming its own cultural identity through a

public representation of their Fijian heritage: cane fields and kava, chautals and curry,

bures and Bollywood.

Scholars of Indo-Fijian twice-migrant communities posit that Indo-Fijians

develop this awareness of a distinctive, Fiji-based cultural identity vis-a-vis their

encounter with other groups in the multicultural urban spaces of the Pacific Rim,

327Co-curator Asha Chand is a member of this community. My description of the exhibit in this section is

wholly based on the account provided in her academic essay.

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particularly "subcontinental Indian" immigrants.328 Although exposure to Indian films,

television, and music in Fiji is widespread, typical Indo-Fijians have little opportunity to

actually interact with subcontinental Indians until they migrate to "Western" metropols

where the latter have established immigrant communities. Based on research conducted

in Vancouver during the 1970s, anthropologist Norman Buchignani notes that Indo-Fijian

immigrants actively sought to disassociate themselves from the long-established Indo-

Canadian Punjabi (Sikh) community. He sums up the sentiment of his field consultants:

"We're not East Indians, we're Fijians" (1980: 87; his emphasis). Two decades later,

Manas Ray, another anthropologist, describes a similar situation for Sydney, where Indo-

Fijian immigrants enter into a subtle competition with subcontinental Indian immigrants

vis-a-vis the dominant host community. "Both realise the need for a united front to deal

with Australian racism," he writes, "but both view each other as an obstacle to better

acceptance by the 'white nation.' Mainland Indians now constitute an other for this

community, just as the [indigenous] Fijians did back in Fiji" (2000: 166; emphasis in the

original). Like Ray, Voigt-Graf examines the construction of transnational spaces in

Sydney by comparing and contrasting three "Indian diasporic" groups: Punjabis (the

oldest community), Kannadigas (mostly technology specialists from Bangalore), and

Indo-Fijians. Although much of her work focuses on ties of kinship and economics

between each group and its respective homeland (2005), she also explores the criteria that

differentiate subcontinental Indians from Indo-Fijians. These criteria include religious

The term "subcontinental Indian" refers to an individual who either emigrated from the Indiansubcontinent or traces his or her ancestry to the Indian subcontinent without the intervention of a significanttertiary location of settlement. Alternative terms in the literature include "mainland Indian" and "India-direct migrant."

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practices, social customs, language use (particularly the "correctness" of spoken Hindi),

style of dress, marriage patterns, and conceptions of caste and class.

In Australia, many Indo-Fijians realised for the first time that they arerejected, ridiculed and kept at a distance by subcontinental Indians—thevery people with whom they believed they shared a culture, even thoughmost had never visited India and had met few subcontinental Indians, inwhom they had often declared a lack of interest. (Voigt-Graf 2004: 195)

In addition to the majority host and subcontinental Indian communities, Indo-Fijian

immigrants also have the opportunity to meet small numbers of Indian twice migrants

from other former indenture colonies such as South Africa and Uganda, with whom they

may feel kinship and form alliances. As I demonstrate below in the case of the

Auckland community, Indo-Fijian twice migrants tend to respond to the encounter of the

new, Pacific Rim others with an embrace of their diasporic, particularly "Fijian" identity,

and the production and consumption of music plays an intrinsic role in this process of

reclamation.

Finally, the Indo-Fijian twice-migrant network increasingly relies on computer-

mediated communication and digital file sharing via the internet to develop and maintain

a sense of transnational interconnectivity. Users in the Pacific Rim cities of secondary

migration initiated the earliest Fiji-related ventures in cyberspace due to the advanced

329The post-independence mass emigration of South Asian diasporic populations has occurred in several

former labor colonies. For example, large numbers in East Africa have resettled in the United Kingdom,many in Surinam have migrated to The Netherlands, and still more in Guyana and Trinidad have shifted tothe U.S. and Canada. The geographic points of overlap with twice-migrant Indo-Fijians are relatively few,however, as Indo-Caribbeans tend to settle in eastern cities such as New York and Toronto.

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digital technology infrastructure in these locales, which lagged in Fiji.330 Nonetheless,

important Fiji-based websites soon developed, including Fijilive.com and Fijivillage.com,

although as Katerina Teaiwa points out regarding the latter, "the highest numbers of 'Fiji

villagers' are Indo-Fijians in the diaspora" (2007: 203). These websites, and many others

based in Fiji's diaspora such as Indofiji.com and Clubkaindia.com, fully utilize "web 2.0"

technology, offering blogs, wikis, and podcasts in addition to online discussion groups

and file sharing. Online forums became important sites of political resistance following

the coup attempt of 2000, and bloggers formed a critical voice of dissent during the

media clampdown that followed the military takeover in 2006.

Music, particularly that of the Hindi film industry, is also a popular subject, and

users in places as disparate as Lautoka, Auckland, and Los Angeles discuss, create, and

share music and other cultural phenomena through the digital conduits of cyberspace.331

Activities range from sharing favorite kirtan or bhajan lyrics in chat rooms to listening to

Hindi radio stations (based in Fiji) online. Grassroots music production companies, such

as Indisoul based in Oakland, depend almost entirely on the internet for online

distribution. For the most part, users pattern their online behaviors of musical production

and consumption on offline precedents, but what is truly radical here is that the

interactive domain now encompasses a global community of Indo-Fijians, at least in

330For example, the telephone density count (teledensity) in Fiji in 1999 was only 9.3 percent, barringsignificant access to the internet via dial-up (Spoonley 2001: 89).

331Mohit Prasad's survey of Indo-Fijians in Sydney shows 62 percent of respondents accessing Fiji-relatedwebsites, 87 percent accessing India-related websites, and 83 percent accessing music-related websites(2005: 248-49). Compare this with my own survey among students (of various ethnicities) at a teacher'straining college in Lautoka, Fiji: 44 percent of these respondents said that they listened to music online,while only 24 percent said that they discussed music online. For more information on this survey, seechapter 2 and Appendix 2.

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theory. As Rene Lysloff writes regarding musical communities on the internet, "it is the

context of on-line communities that might be virtual (or electric, or cyber, or whatever),

not the sets of social relationships such collectivities engender" (2003: 257; emphasis in

the original). In this way, the internet with its global, multifaceted reach is not only a

primary component of the Indo-Fijian transnational community but also its most potent

metaphor.

Finally Fijian?: Indo-Fijian Music and Identity Discourse in Auckland, New Zealand332

Prior to the implementation of New Zealand's Immigration Act of 1987, Indo-

Fijian migration to its southern neighbor had largely been restricted to small but steady

numbers of students and laborers, particularly those specializing in halal butchery and

market gardening (Levick and Bedford 1988: 16). The liberalizing shift in policy—which

included visa-waiver provisions, expanded family reunification rules, more flexible work

permits, and the abolition of national origin as a factor in selection—combined with the

historical coincidence of Fiji's 1987 military coups led to a dramatic increase in the

arrivals of Indo-Fijians as well as other Pacific Islanders (Brake 1993: 175). Although

immigration policy tightened during the 1990s, large numbers of Indo-Fijians had already

achieved permanent residency through marriage, chain-migration, or quasi-refugee status.

Immigration remained steady, and today the Indo-Fijian population in New Zealand is

approximately 40,000.333 Over the past two decades New Zealand has, by design,

332New Zealand is also known by its Maori name, "Aotearoa."This is my estimate based on a triangulation of available data. It is difficult to get an accurate count of

Indo-Fijians from the New Zealand census because respondents variously identify as "Fijian," "Indian,"

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transformed itself into a multicultural nation, and the 2006 Census reveals that 23 percent

of the total population is foreign-born. By the time most Indo-Fijians arrived,

subcontinental Indian migrants—particularly Gujaratis (mostly Hindu) and Punjabis

(mostly Sikh)—had established communities that were generations deep. Altogether, the

"Indian" category, including most Indo-Fijians, is the second largest "Asian" group in

New Zealand, behind the Chinese. Still, most of New Zealand's ethnic diversity is

confined to the cities of the North Island, particularly Auckland.334 The majority of Indo-

Fijians (65 percent) have settled in Auckland, particularly the southern regions of

Otahuhu, Papatoetoe, and Mangere, and the western regions of New Windsor,

Henderson, and New Lynn, which are essentially the same areas populated by

subcontinental Indian communities. Beyond Auckland, Wellington is home to

approximately 14 percent of the Indo-Fijian population, and smaller communities reside

in Hamilton and Christchurch.

New Zealand's Indo-Fijian population generally reflects the demographic profile

present in Fiji. Like their subcontinental Indian neighbors, Indo-Fijians tend to fall into

"Fiji-Indian," or "Other." However, one set of data from the 2006 Census shows 37,746 respondents bornin Fiji. Since Indo-Fijians make up an average of 89 percent of total Fiji emigration, we can estimate a totalof 33,594 Fiji-born Indo-Fijians in New Zealand. To account for the second-generation of New Zealand-born Indo-Fijians, I turned to data available from the 2001 New Zealand Census. Of the 1,983 respondentswho identified themselves as "Fiji Indians," 17 percent were New Zealand-born. Applying this ratio(speculatively) to the 2006 Fiji-born figure, we arrive at the total of 40,474. Sources: Statistics NewZealand, "2001Census of Population and Dwellings" and "2006 Census of Population and Dwellings,"New Zealand Government, http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/default.htm. Accessed January 5,2008.334

According to the 2006 Census, Auckland is the most ethnically diverse region in New Zealand, sharedby "Europeans" (56.5 percent), "Asians" (18.9 percent), "Pacific Islanders" (14.4 percent), and "Maoris"(11.1 percent). Source: Statistics New Zealand, "2006 Census of Population and Dwellings," New ZealandGovernment, http://www.stats.govt.nz/census/2006-census-data/efault.htm. Accessed January 5, 2008.

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the middle class, finding employment in the retail trade or as professionals.335 Since the

majority of Indo-Fijians arrived after the coups of 1987, first-generation immigrants

dominate the community (83 percent), complemented by a smaller New Zealand-born

second generation (17 percent). Although it is difficult to determine religious affiliation

based on the census (since the data on the majority of Indo-Fijians disappear into the

broader "Indian" category), a sampling of the 1,963 respondents who identified as "Fiji

Indian" in 2001 reveals surprisingly high percentages for Muslims (31 percent) and

Christians (18 percent) while Hindus remain in the majority (43 percent). The social lives

of Indo-Fijians in New Zealand continue to revolve around soccer, kava, Bollywood, and

the communal practice of religion, both domestically and in public places of worship.

Fijian produce and products (including music cassettes and CDs) are readily available in

local shops, and most Indo-Fijians make frequent trips to Fiji for special occasions such

as religious holidays, weddings, and funerals or for business purposes. During the last

five years Indo-Fijians, along with subcontinental Indians, have achieved a degree of

visibility in mainstream New Zealand society, particularly through prominent figures—

such as Anand Satyanand, a descendent of Indo-Fijians who became New Zealand's first

non-white, non-Maori governor-general in 2006—and public celebrations such as Central

Auckland's annual Diwali festival, which attracts a large number of non-Indians.336

335Based on data from 2001, the mean income for Indo-Fijians only slightly less than that forsubcontinental Indians (Dean 2003: 32).

Actual relationships between Indo-Fijians and members of the "white" {Pakeha in Maori) majoritymust overcome a history of anti-Asian discrimination in New Zealand that culminated during the 1990swith a series of high-profile attacks on Indians (Leckie 1995: 133). Sanjeeta Lal's research on the racialprejudice and discrimination directed at Indo-Fijians in New Zealand, although based on a relatively smallsample, reveals experiences of employment related discrimination, verbal insults, and social exclusion(1998).

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Furthermore, in Teaiwa's analysis, sites such as the public Diwali celebrations—together

with the spread of Indian cuisine and the consumption (and reinterpretation) of

Bollywood and Hindi music—provide spaces for Indo-Fijians and other migrant Pacific

Islanders to form bonds of "popular kinship" (2007: 219). My focus here, however, is

on the musical practices of Indo-Fijian Hindus (Sanatanis) and related discourses about

their own ethnic identities—discourses that tend to take shape vis-a-vis the encounter

with subcontinental Indians.

New Zealand's subcontinental Indian population—roughly twice the size of the

Indo-Fijian community—is a relatively diverse group dominated by the older Gujarati

and Punjabi communities but inclusive of more recent professional-class migrants from

various Indian states and a smaller number of migrants from other South Asian nations,

particularly Sri Lanka. My Indo-Fijian field consultants tended to describe their

encounter with subcontinental Indians in terms of the competitive element intrinsic to the

immigrant experience. However, the struggle they describe is not merely economic: both

groups, through their discourses and practices, vie for the "cultural high ground" and the

right to represent and thus claim the "Indian" identity in New Zealand. Subcontinental

Indians emphasize their earlier arrival, their direct link to India as "passenger" migrants,

and their preservation of an "unadulterated" Indian culture, particularly in terms of

337These bonds, she suggests, "displace the dominant framework in which our analytics assume purely

indigenous, Western or South Asian centres of movement, meaning, production and power" (Teaiwa 2007:223). To give one example, the 2006 Celebrate Pasifika Festival in Auckland, normally nicknamed"Polyfest" (after Polynesia), drew so much attention for its Indian cultural items that local media dubbedthe event "Bollyfest" (after Bollywood). Apart from the Maori, Samoans are by far the largest Pacificgroup in New Zealand. Indigenous Fijians are a distant fifth behind Cook Islands Maori, Tongans, andNiueans.

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custom, language, and the caste system.338 Indo-Fijians counter through recourse to an

authenticating narrative that ties the survival of "true" Indian culture to the crucible of

indenture in Fiji, inclusive of both cultural conservation (i.e., the continued emphasis on

the bhakti doctrine) and social progress (i.e., the rejection of the caste system). As Pravin,

an Indo-Fijian Ramayan mandali member in Auckland demonstrates, this discourse

hinges on a valorization of their rural, girmitiya heritage:

Our grandparents were not educated; they were not the upper class. Mostof the [subcontinental] Indians you see here are professionals and theycome from cosmopolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, andHyderabad. Most of them have lost touch with the villages, they have losttouch with their roots. We still maintain those connections through ourRamayan mandalis.

Demonstrating fierce pride, Dinesh, another Indo-Fijian respondent in Auckland,

suggests that Indo-Fijians have answered discrimination with achievement, both

economic and cultural:

When we first came from Fiji, the [subcontinental] Indians used todiscriminate against us as "Islanders." But in the years gone past, we haveproved to them that we are better than them. We have dominated all thebusinesses; all the doctors, the teachers—they're all Fiji Indian ...[Subcontinental] Indians used to hold their functions without inviting FijiIndians, but now they have to invite us because all the dancing groups, thesingers, the bands are from Fiji.

As detailed below, the "othered" relationship between Auckland's Indo-Fijian and

subcontinental Indian communities engenders an introspection productive of the self-

338This summation is based on several sources, including Leckie (1995: 140-43) and my own research.

Nikhat Shameem notes that nearly half of her teenaged Indo-Fijian respondents reported "negative attitudestowards Fiji Hindi speech from the local Indian community" (1995: 275).

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conscious articulation of cultural difference, particularly regarding religious practice and

musical performance.

The realization of these cultural differences is clearly reflected (and reified)

through the establishment of separate representational institutions and community

organizations. The early Indian associations founded in the 1920s stressed their

inclusiveness in terms of religious identity but turned more communal with the postwar

proliferation of religious organizations. For example, the Auckland Indian Association,

registered in 1938, is today dominated by (subcontinental) Gujarati Hindus, and their

Mahatma Gandhi Centre/Radha Krishna Mandir remains an important center for

Hinduism in New Zealand. To accommodate their particular linguistic, social, and

cultural needs, Indo-Fijians formed the Fiji Association in Auckland in 1977, which has

over the years sponsored various visiting musicians and dancers from both Fiji and India.

As large numbers of Indo-Fijians began arriving during the 1980s, they continued to form

their own religious, social, and educational organizations. Following the 1987 coups,

Indo-Fijians in Auckland and Wellington—together with indigenous Fijian immigrants—

formed a political lobby group called the Coalition for Democracy in Fiji (Leckie 1995:

152).339

Indo-Fijian religious organizations, such as the Auckland Ramayan Sanstha Trust

established in 1986 and the Vishwa Shanti Ashram (NZ) established in 1995, began to

add their own temples, community halls, and education centers to Auckland's cityscape.

Certain organizations demonstrate alliances with other twice-migrant groups—for

339Such political lobby groups appeared throughout the Pacific Rim, including the Committee for

Democracy in Fiji (based in San Francisco) and the Movement for Democracy in Fiji (based in Sydney).

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example, the Indo-Fijian-based Waitakere Indian Association founded a Hindi education

program with a group of South African Indians, and the new Hindu Heritage Centre

(partly an Indo-Fijian endeavor) received financial support from a group of Indians from

Singapore. Finally, the Indo-Fijian population in New Zealand is of sufficient size to

reproduce and sustain the patterns of subethnic difference maintained by organizations in

Fiji. The Shree Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Mahasabha of New Zealand, established in

1992, maintains close contact with its Fiji predecessor and now has nine branches around

New Zealand. In 1998, Indo-Fijian immigrants of South Indian descent registered the

India Samarga Ikya Sangam (affiliated with the Fiji-based T.I.S.I. Sangam) and have

plans to build a Shiva temple based on the Sri Siva Subramaniya Swami Temple in

Nadi.340

Likewise, Indo-Fijian and subcontinental Indian Hindus tend to worship in

separate spaces, although there is some overlap in prominent community temples, such as

the Bharatiya Mandir in Sandringham, and public festivals, such as Diwali

celebrations.341 My Indo-Fijian field consultants in Auckland stressed the domesticity,

340It is interesting to note that "South Indian" Indo-Fijian immigrants have failed to liaison with Tamil Sri

Lankan and South Indian Hindus in New Zealand. This is partly due to the language barrier (Tamil versesFiji Hindi), but as an officer at the Sangam organization told me, it also has to do with migrationhierarchies: "I personally feel that [subcontinental Indians] think that people from Fiji don't know anythingabout culture.... They look at us as a bit inferior until they start coming and get to know us." By contrast,Indo-Fijian Muslims, who quickly assumed the majority among Muslims in New Zealand, joined thepreexisting New Zealand Muslim Association with little difficulty.

341Regarding these shared religious spaces, Farzana Dean observes: "Although there are religiousfunctions in which individuals across the various sub-communities affiliated with that religion participate,at such gatherings, there appears to be a tendency to associate largely with those from your own ethniccommunity" (2003: 39). Regarding Diwali in particular, Henry Johnson points out that the largestcelebrations in Auckland and Wellington are organized through the "intervention" of the city councils andthe partly state-funded Asia New Zealand Foundation. Although the main performing acts at these eventsare India-based touring groups, the organization of the event requires the participation and cooperation of

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regularity, and intensity of their own devotional practices, which they claimed as distinct

from the practices of the subcontinental Indians in their midst. Said one member of a

Ramayan mandali, "We find it hard to associate with [subcontinental] Indians.... They

may be in the neighborhood, but they won't join in because they don't have mandalis like

ours; they just go to the temple and pray." Another member of the Indo-Fijian

community, a pracharak, shared his observations regarding conduct at Hindu pujas:

Our Fijian people will sit down to the end of it, because that's how we'vebeen taught. If you go to a recital or a puja, you sit down to the end of it,have your prasdd, and then you go. But [subcontinental] Indian people arenot like that. They'll come in halfway through the thing, they'll sit downfor ten or fifteen minutes, and then they'll get up and leave.

Such comments indicate a retreat from the "India of the imagination" cultivated in Fiji, in

which India (and the subcontinental Indian) represents Hinduism's center of gravity and

purist source.342 This disillusionment, widely reported by Indo-Fijian twice migrants, is

based on the realization (and embrace) of their own cultural uniqueness. Simply put,

Indo-Fijian Sanatanis develop a pride in their bhakti-oriented, participatory Hindu

practices, which they consider to be beyond the reach of their busy, urbanite

subcontinental Indian neighbors. Importantly, this disenchantment with local Indian

Hindus does not extend to Hindu India, and famous Ramayana expounders, such as

subcontinental Indians and Indo-Fijians, and one underlying goal is to bring these communities together(Johnson 2007: 85).342

In Fiji, I often heard comments to the effect that Hindu practices (and particularly their associatedmusical performances) were some how more "pure" or "correct" in India. See also Voigt-Graf 2004: 191.

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Morari Bapu and Ramesh Bhai Oza, and cherished recording artists, such as Anup Jalota

and Anuradha Paudwal, remain revered sources of inspiration.343

Indo-Fijian Sanatanis in Auckland tend to observe the events of the Hindu ritual

calendar followed in Fiji—such as Faag and Ram Naumi (see chapter 6)—but the most

important Hindu gatherings in terms of regularity and individual involvement remain the

weekly meetings of the Ramayan mandali.344 As made explicit in the quotes above, the

practice of worshiping and singing in Ramayan mandalis connects Indo-Fijians to their

girmitiya (i.e. rural and devotional) roots and sets them apart from their subcontinental

Indian brethren, who they perceive as corrupted by modernity. While my Indo-Fijian

field consultants consider themselves to be fully modern, they emphasized the necessity

of dedicating time to religious devotion and self-improvement through the weekly recital

of the Ramayana. According to Babu Singh, the secretary general of the Shree Sanatan

Dharm Pratinidhi Mahasabha of New Zealand, there are fifty-two Ramayan mandalis in

Auckland registered with his organization and still more that have failed to register.345

343For example, the Parmanand Ramayan Mandali, an Auckland-based Indo-Fijian religious group,

sponsored the visit of Shree Lakshman Dass Maharaj, a well-known Hindu expounder from Ayodhya,India. During his month-long visit, Maharaj presented a Devi Bhagwat katha and a Ram katha, the latter ofwhich I attended, and the mandali also provided musical accompaniment for both performances. As in Fiji,several Auckland-based pracharaks drew inspiration from the recordings of Bapu and Oza, and theperformance of a Ram katha by Bapu in Auckland in 1988 was described by Jim Wilson as the "mostsignificant Hindu occasion in Aotearoa [New Zealand] since Hindus first came here" (1996: 164).

Although Diwali was the only major Hindu festival day to occur during my visit to Auckland, my fieldconsultants showed me their own video/DVD recordings of local celebrations, including Ram Naumi andNavratri, and verbally described other celebrations, such as Faag. More rarely, a group within thecommunity may stage a Ramlila, usually in an indoor theater. "South Indian" traditions continue as well,including terukkttu performance and Mariamman puja, although without the element of firewalking.345

Due to the relative compactness of the Auckland area, the Mahasabha of New Zealand has had moresuccess regulating and (perhaps) standardizing Ramayan mandali practice than its Fiji-based counterpart.For example, the Mahasabha has its own pracharak who visits Ramayan mandalis around Auckland,offering guidance to other preachers regarding the correct pronunciation of Sanskrit words, etc. At the timeof my visit, the Mahasabha was in the process of hiring a local Indo-Fijian music teacher as the "national

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Many mandalis are composed of extended families, meet at home, and emphasize the

religious and cultural education of their younger members. A recital that I attended held

by one such mandali stressed the participation of both men and women. Partly through

these ties of kinship, many mandalis in Auckland maintain a regional identity based in

Fiji. For example, the majority membership of one mandali I visited derived from the

Tavua area of Fiji, whereas another mandali hailed from Nausori near Suva.346 Finally,

much like Fiji, mandalis in Auckland tend to include Indo-Fijians of both North and

South Indian heritage. As noted in chapter 7, "South Indian" Indo-Fijian Hindus tend to

revere the Rdmcaritmdnas with a passion equal to the "North Indian" majority. As a case

in point, the India Samarga Ikya Sangam of Auckland (an organization promoting South

Indian culture) hosts a Ramayan mandali every Tuesday.

In all significant respects, the Ramayana recitals {Rdmdyan path) I attended in

Auckland demonstrated a notable uniformity both amongst themselves and with their

precursors in Fiji. Most recitals followed the same ritual framing and sequential arc

described in chapter 7: mahgalacaran, Ramayan sumarni, drati, path (caupais, dohas,

etc.), visarjan, and santi path. The recital may be led by a senior family member, a

pracharak (often a non-Brahman), or a (Brahman) pandit. The instrumentation of the

coordinator for Ramayan recitals and standardized practice" (according to Singh). The Mahasabha also hasa Nari Sabha to oversee women's religious groups and activities and recently established a PurohitBrahman Mahasabha to oversee the registration and practices of Indo-Fijian pandits in the Aucklandcommunity.346

The persistence of Fiji-based regional identities in mandali formation has analogues in other socialdomains of the Indo-Fijian community, such as sporting clubs. Based on his research in Sydney, Prasadnotes that local soccer teams of Indo-Fijian membership name their teams after home districts in Fiji, suchas Ba or Rewa (just as they do in Auckland). These affiliations, he writes, utilize soccer as a form ofpopular culture that "creates a sense of allegiance to club, place, district, region, province, or in someinstances the idea of a country, or nation-state" (Prasad 2005: 216).

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mandali ensemble remains the same: harmonium, dholak, dahaa tal and other

idiophones, although as in Fiji the dholak may occasionally be replaced by a tabla set.

The melodies, too, are very similar or identical to those used in Fiji, and the banis (the

bhajan refrains culled from filmi devotional recordings to accompany the Ramayana

verses) reveal the same sources and are employed in the same fashion. The languages

used in the recital are those of the text (Awadhi) and Standard Hindi for the exegesis.

Despite a rise in the preference for English in formal situations, religious occasions

remain a stronghold of South Asian languages, and after the recital as the kava basins

appear, Fiji Hindi resumes its place as the language of choice for conversation.347

The Ramayana recital, therefore, remains a recognizably Indo-Fijian institution in

Auckland alongside other examples of Indo-Fijian "local folk music" including lok geet

and tambura bhajan. Joining in a Ramayan mandali and singing kirtans between sips of

kava is not merely a mechanism for community cohesion—it is also a mark of ethnic

identity. Moreover, the distinctive style and aesthetics of these musical practices carry an

inherent value identified by devotees as particularly efficacious in religious ritual, a

quality that I describe as "viable authenticity" in chapter 7. In the case of the Ramayana

recital, this authenticity draws from several sources: the link to rural northern India

through folk styles and instruments associated with indenture, the link to revered

international Hindu expounders and singers through the adoption of their techniques and

347Language studies among Indo-Fijians in New Zealand, such as those by Shameem (1995) and Dean

(2003), suggest that the use of Fiji Hindi decreases significantly with the second generation.Comprehension of Standard Hindi remains adequate due in large part to the popularity of Hindi films, andShameem notes that many Indo-Fijian Sanatanis prefer their own Indo-Fijian pandits, even though the lattermay struggle with Standard Hindi (1995: 291).

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semiclassical melodies, and the link to the India of the imagination through the rendering

of devotional verse to Bollywood melodies. Critically, Indo-Fijians in Auckland perceive

the convergence of all three phenomena in mandali practice as a uniquely Fijian creation,

one that sets them apart from the subcontinental Indians that share their neighborhoods.

As one pracharak told me:

The tambura bhajan is not known to the [subcontinental] Indians. Andwhen they recite Ramayan, they only sing the main parts. In our Fijianway of doing it, we sing all the lyrics, and the pracharak will stop andexplain. The idea is to get people involved in singing. I suppose thatkeeping that alive is the only way that we can say that we're Fijians.

Here, in the multicultural expanse of Auckland, Indo-Fijians fully realize the worth of

their distinctive cultural practices through the encounter with their Indian other and

identify, finally, as "Fijian."

Based on the recasting of the "twice-migrated" as the "twice-banished" by certain

Indo-Fijian writers, we might expect the meaning of the Ramayana in the lives of Indo-

Fijian Sanatanis in New Zealand to shift towards the theme of Ram's exile, just as it did

for the girmitiyas who made the original journey to Fiji (see chapter 4). The discourse of

the twice-banished underscores the political narrative of Indo-Fijian emigration—the

ethnonationalism, landlessness, and coups—and draws a parallel between the experiences

of the current migrants and their progenitors.348 Nevertheless, while most Indo-Fijians

348Rajendra Prasad, an Indo-Fijian writer now residing in Auckland, captures this perspective in Tears in

Paradise (2004), his personalized account of Indo-Fijian history. For example, in the following passage, helinks the girmitiyas and twice migrants in terms of their investment in the future: "Indeed, the restive Indo-Fijian spirit cannot be persuaded to wait in hope. Indo-Fijians are not only concerned about the present butalso with the future. The Indo-Fijian parents' obsession with the future of their children and families is a

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share this sentiment, the Ramayana remains above all a vehicle for personal devotion to

god (bhakti) and a guide to a morally centered life (dharmasdstra). In the context of

displacement, the epic serves the devotee best as an anchor rather than a metaphor. As

Naresh, a pracharak, explained to me, "The Ramayan has answers for everybody in every

situation. If you lose something that you feel is precious to you, always keep the belief

above all that god has something in reserve for you that is better. The loss of your country

now may be a blessing in disguise. That belief comes from the Ramayan." In the end, it

was Ram's banishment to the forest that provided him with the opportunity to bless the

wandering sages, befriend the monkeys, combat Ravan, and fulfill his destiny.

Bollywood, Bhojpuri, and Bhakti: Transnational Media and Twice Migrant Identity

Although social distancing from subcontinental Indians was a recurrent theme in

the discourses of the Indo-Fijians I interviewed in Auckland, I should be cautious not to

overstate this point. The situation is certainly not one of open hostility, and groups

interact and cooperate in various religious, social, and occupational spaces. From one

perspective, the consumption of popular culture is one such shared space—Indian

transnational entertainment media, particularly "Bollywood" Hindi films and film

soundtracks, enjoy a tremendous multigenerational popularity in Auckland among both

subcontinental Indian and Indo-Fijian consumers. From another perspective, the Indo-

Fijian consumption of Bollywood films and music is, once again, a communally

distinctive activity. Viewer-listeners creatively interpret the images, narratives, and

strong communal inheritance. The toil of the girmitiyas and their sacrifices for a better future for theirfamilies had left the same traits of sacrifice in subsequent generations of Indo-Fijians" (Prasad 2004:264).

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melodies of filmdom and incorporate them into their lives in ways that are uniquely

meaningful to the twice-migrant experience. In this final section, I examine the role of

transnational media in constructs of Indo-Fijian devotional music, particularly as

observed in Auckland. My case study is not Hindi film music per se, but Bhojpuri-

language film music that entered the Indo-Fijian repertoire through the device of musical

parody (borrowing) originally employed for the appropriation of Bollywood melodies. As

described below, the turn to Bhojpuri source material, which enjoyed a sudden popularity

during my fieldwork period, carries a heightened significance since Indo-Fijian musicians

of North Indian heritage recognize Bhojpuri culture as that of their girmitiya forefathers.

In an insightful article based on research in Sydney and Brisbane, Ray claims that

Indo-Fijian twice migrants are the highest consumers of Hindi films among "Indian"

immigrants and have rapidly constructed "a whole cultural ecology around Hindi popular

filmdom" (2000: 145). Specifically, he analyzes the activities of Indo-Fijian youths who

seek an alternative cultural platform to hegemonic "Western" popular culture paradigms

through the reproduction of Hindi film songs in cover bands, karaoke, and remixes.

Critically, Ray suggests that Indo-Fijian bhakti-oriented folk music practices (particularly

those centered on the Ramayana) actually anticipated and paved the way for the

popularity of Bollywood cinema, first in Fiji and later in Australia. Throughout its

history, Bollywood has drawn on the epics of Hindu mythology for its most salient

themes and archetypical characters, and the cinematic image of India—a Hindu nation,

often collapsed with the Hindu family—generally coheres with that provided by the

Ramayana, Mahabharata, and other texts of Sanatan Dharm (see also Mankekar 1999).

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Curiously, Ray's research omits the phenomenon that perhaps best represents the

conflation of Bollywood and bhakti-oriented Indo-Fijian folk traditions: the incorporation

of Hindi film melodies into the "local folk music" repertoire of kirtans, tambura bhajans,

and the Ramayana recital itself. The popularity and omnipresence of Bollywood films in

Fiji—evidenced by the dedicated screens of movie theaters in Suva and Lautoka, the

bustling business of Hindi film DVD rentals, and the ubiquity of Hindi film music on the

radio—continue among Indo-Fijians of various ages in Auckland.349 As described in

chapters 6 and 7, Hindi film is often the source of musical material integrated into various

Indo-Fijian genres either through musical quotation (the text and melody of a refrain) or

musical parody (the borrowing of a melody but not the text). Particular film melodies,

designated as the "latest tune," flare up in popularity and make the rounds of Ramayan

mandalis, kirtan circles, and singing competitions before fading from view, to be replaced

by the next Bollywood hit.

In early 2006, the latest tune to hit the Indo-Fijian music scene derived not from

the pan-Indian Hindi film industry, however, but from the regional Bhojpuri-language

film industry popular in eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar. Due in part to low

production costs and high returns, the Bhojpuri film industry was enjoying an

unprecedented success and had begun to attract big-name Bollywood stars such as

Amitabh Bachchan. Part of this financial success owed to the increasing demand for

Bhojpuri films and music in the nation-states of the former labor diaspora such as

349Beyond the anecdotal, Shameem records that 19 percent of her teenaged Indo-Fijian respondents in

New Zealand viewed a Hindi film "weekly," whereas 23 percent responded "often," and 36 percentresponded "sometimes" (1995:215).

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Surinam, Mauritius, and Fiji, where Bhojpuri-related dialects survive. The "film" that hit

Fiji was actually a VCD (Video Compact Disc) of a scripted musical stage show

featuring a series of skits and folksongs performed by costumed actors. Titled Nirhua

Satal Rahe ("The Husband is Healthy"), the VCD features singer-actor Dinesh Lal

Yadav, a rising star in the Bhojpuri film industry, in various vignettes on the themes of

marriage, land, and politics. The action unfolds against a painted backdrop featuring

pastoral scenes of farmers toiling in their fields, although the dancing and music largely

transcend the narrative. Importantly, the music (identified as "Dhobi geet," or

"washerman songs") remains true to Bhojpuri folk traditions, including a call and

response format and acoustic instrumentation (harmonium, dholak, and hand cymbals).350

By February 2006, the most requested tracks on Nirhua Satal Rahe enjoyed heavy

circulation on Fiji's Hindi radio stations, and copies of the VCD began to appear in most

homes I visited. Subsequent volumes of the VCD series also sold well, and the entire

canon developed a genre status known simply as "Bhojpuri." As the year progressed, I

heard the most popular Bhojpuri melodies incorporated into various local genres

including tambura bhajan, qawali, kirtan, and the sehnai (double-reed aerophone) music

performed at weddings. The Bhojpuri melodies also made their way into the topical

terukkiittu (folk theater) performed at firewalking pujas and sounded as a popular ring-

tone among Indo-Fijian mobile phone users. In August, the "Indian Night" of the

Vodafone Hibiscus Festival in Suva was dubbed "Bhojpuri Night" by its organizers and

350 Nirhua Satal Rahe 61:01 min., T-Series, India, 2006, VCD (CDVNF 2769). In addition to Yadav, therecording features singer Khushu Raj. Incidentally, the VCD was disseminated in Fiji almost entirelythrough local pirated copies; in fact, I was unable to find a legitimate original to purchase in Fiji.

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featured "original Bhojpuri songs" by the Indo-Fijian lok geet specialist Vidya Locke,

who was visiting from Sydney. The trend culminated in June 2007 with the arrival of

Yadav himself, who toured Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. With his ensemble of

musicians and dancers, he recreated his famous Bhojpuri stage show for no fewer than

seven well-attended performances in Fiji.351

From Fiji, the popularity of the Bhojpuri VCDs spread to Indo-Fijian

communities in the Pacific Rim metropols, where musicians continued to integrate the

melodies into their devotional music repertoire. In Auckland, I heard Bhojpuri melodies

frequently in various Sanatani devotional settings, including the tambura bhajan

competition that serves as my primary example. Billed as a "Bhajan Sandhya" ("Bhajan

Evening"), the event pitched Achudan Nair (the "Ex-Ba Star") against Raj Bali Mohan

(the "Ex-Suva Star") in four hours of devotional singing, each accompanied on stage by

their respective bhajan mandalis. Throughout the evening, each bhajaniya (devotional

singer) explored the vistdr (theme) of bhakti as he moved between the usual combination

of "traditional" and filmi musical material (see Figure 29).

At the close of the program, Nair received the honor of singing the song of

thanks. He began with a brief instrumental introduction using the melody from the

Bhojpuri song "Tel gamkuva" ("Oil Massage"), which he followed with a few dohds

(couplets) from the Rdmcaritmdnas delivered in a declamatory style. From here, he

transitioned into another well-known Bhojpuri piece of music—the title song of the

351 "Musician Promises Superb Performance," The Fiji Times, 20 June 2007, p. 11.352

Based on the "Fijian" precedent, this tambura bhajan competition followed the format described inchapter 7 for"bhajan pratiyogitd."

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Nirhua Satal Rahe VCD—and his mandali joined in, providing instrumental

accompaniment and the responsorial chorus. While adapting the overall musical structure

of "Nirhua Satal Rahe"—including melody, rhythm, and song form—Nair inserted his

own lyrics, which singled out various groups and individuals for acknowledgement. In

Figure 29: Tambura bhajan competition. Achudan Nair sings with his mandali in competion. Auckland,New Zealand, 2006. Photo by K.Miller.

Musical Example 13, which illustrates a section of Nair's performance, he thanks the

members of the community who contributed their time to the event, particularly the

Brahman pandits.353 Midway through his performance, Nair switched back to the "Tel

gamkuva" melody for his final, parting verses and concluded the song to appreciative

applause.

353The bhajan competition was sponsored by the Shree Sanatan Dharm Purohit Brahman Mahasabha ofNew Zealand, the umbrella organization for Brahman pandits and purohits.

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"work of the imagination," a "bewildering palimpsest of highly local and highly

translocal considerations" that constitute modern subjectivity (1996: 198). Thus, the

popularity of the Bhojpuri material in Fiji and its diaspora and its absorption into local

musical styles indicates multiple points of attachment to various locales, both real and

imagined.

For Indo-Fijians in Auckland and other locales of twice-migrant dispersion,

engagement with Bhojpuri materials reveals a continued attachment to Fiji. The

"Bhojpuri trend," first developed in Fiji, and its spread to the Pacific Rim communities

suggests a relatively unified transnational popular culture indicative of the desire to

maintain (or reproduce) Indo-Fijian frameworks of musical consumption and production

in the new locale. Several field consultants in Auckland had acquired the Bhojpuri VCDs

on a visit to Fiji, and at least one had purchased his copy on a trip to Vancouver, Canada.

In response to an online discussion I initiated about the Bhojpuri VCDs, a respondent

based in the United States offered this reply: "I also have the vcd as well and enjoyed it. I

could pick up on several words but it wasn't the words that hooked me, it was the music

composition. Reason being the rhythms are set similar to bhajans sung in Fiji with

harmonium, Dholak and Dhantaal."354 The extensive circulation of these recordings

throughout the Indo-Fijian transnational network highlights the "social life" of

technology—the inherent qualities of the medium that condition its social impact.355 In

354This exchange occurred in a discussion forum on IndoFiji.com (www.indofiji.com), based in the San

Francisco Bay Area; reply posted October 27,2006.See, for example, Faye D. Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin's introduction to Media

Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain (2002). They write, "The limiting of ethnography to content or itsreception plays down the means by which technologies, through their very form, impose new socialrelations" (Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin 2002: 19).

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this case, the VCD offers an inexpensive, durable digital medium capable of mass

duplication and dissemination, the ideal qualities for transnational media.

For Indo-Fijians in general, the consumption of the Bhojpuri VCDs articulates

with the preexisting discourse of "rural memory," which situates viably authentic

practices in the past and in the fields (see chapter 7). As demonstrated by the respondent

quoted above, many viewer-listeners recognize something of their own culture in the

Bhojpuri material, particularly in terms of language and musical style. Of course, much

of this recognition derives from the actual historical connection between Indo-Fijians and

the Bhojpuri belt of eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar. As detailed in previous

chapters, the majority (about 75 percent) of the girmitiyas to arrive in Fiji originated from

this area, and the music-culture of the region served as the base for most Indo-Fijian

forms of "local folk music" including tambura bhajan, lok geet, and qawali. The Bhojpuri

language, actually a dialect of Hindi, was spoken by about 33 percent of the girmitiyas

that embarked from the northern port of Calcutta, and this language made an important

contribution to the Fiji Hindi lingua franca that subsequently developed.356

Most of my field consultants claimed to understand the majority of the sung and

spoken Bhojpuri in the VCDs, although certain words and phrases elude them. In fact,

Radio Fiji Two, one of Fiji's state-assisted Hindi broadcast stations, pulled the Bhojpuri

recordings from the airwaves after producers realized—belatedly—that the songs

Awadhi, the language of the Ramcaritmanas, was spoken by another 33 percent of North Indiangirmitiyas (Siegel 1987: 141).

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contained double entendres and sexual innuendo.357 But more to the point, the language

used in the VCDs reminds some Indo-Fijians of the speech styles of their predecessors,

particularly those from the Labasa area of Vanua Levu, Fiji's hub of rural authenticity.

Rajen, a singer from this area told me, "We, the older generation, remember our

forefathers talking like that. But the younger generation, they haven't heard that." Ram, a

pracharak now living in Auckland, recalled his youth in the Ba area of western Viti Levu:

"All the folksongs that were sung in old times when we were growing up, they were all

Bhojpuri. If there was no lok geet in the wedding, there was no wedding. Then it was

lost." Beyond the language of the VCDs, most consumers are drawn to the music itself,

which they recognize as congruous with their own styles of performance, use of

instrumentation, and textual needs. Many young people were among the vanguard of the

Bhojpuri trend, attracted by the fast tempos, mixed sex dancing, and romantic themes, but

Ram suggests that the attachment runs deeper: "It gives them the thought: 'this is how we

used to be, this is how our ancestors were, this is something that we should really be

following, this is our original music.'"

Finally, by locating their own pasts in the rhythms of contemporary Bhojpuri

stage shows, Indo-Fijians reveal a sense of fellowship—however tenuous—with the

modern-day Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and, by extension, the globally

dispersed communities of indenture in the Indian Ocean, Africa, and the Caribbean. Only

For example, the title track of Nirhua Satal Rahe derives from the song's chorus: dulhi rahe bimarnirhud satal rahe ("The young wife is sick, the husband is healthy"). The implication is that the husband ismuch older—the actor depicting this character in the stage show has grey hair and a cane—so why shouldhe be healthy and his young wife sick? Satal ("healthy") can also mean "sexually satisfied," however, andin other verses of the song it carries this meaning (again in relation to the husband).

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a handful of the Indo-Fijians I met during my fieldwork had ever been to India, and while

many expressed an abstract desire to visit the land of their forefathers, most appeared

satisfied to keep India a purely imagined thing—a continuous source of popular culture in

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the form of films, television programs, and music. In Voigt-Graf's assessment, many

Indo-Fijians temper their reception of the idealized India (modern, affluent, culturally

rich, and religiously strong) contained within this mediascape with a more realistic image

of the Indian state (overpopulated, communal, economically disadvantaged, and

occasionally violent) gained through the news media (2004: 193). Ultimately, those who

can afford to travel prioritize visits to relatives in the Pacific Rim metropols or, if they are

already situated overseas, visits to Fiji. To many viewer-listeners, the Bhojpuri VCDs

with their rural themes and set designs represent an India of the past—their own girmitiya

past—and their consumption of the Bhojpuri material largely bypasses any engagement

with the modern Indian nation-state.

Meanwhile, the popularity of the Bhojpuri VCDs throughout the Indo-Fijian

transnational network has encouraged a greater sense of fellowship with communities in

the South Asian diaspora that share a common origin in the Bhojpuri belt of northeast

India. Fiji has long been claimed as an important, disparate member of the "Bhojpuri

diaspora," although Indo-Fijians themselves have shown little interest in cultivating a

"Bhojpuri identity."359 Still, the Bhojpuri trend in Fiji and its diaspora has an important

358Indo-Fijians who do visit India may do so as part of an organized temple tour by Fiji-based Hinduorganizations or as part of organized "roots tours" arranged by India-based tourist agencies. Compellingaccounts by individuals who attempted to locate their distant relatives in India appear in Lal (2000a) andPrasad (2004).359

Numerous websites about Bhojpuri culture include Fiji on their list of countries where Bhojpuri isspoken, and the Bhojpuri Sansaar website even claims that "Bhojpuri people" are the "elite and main ruling

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precursor: the Caribbean-based genres of chutney and chutney-soca, which have enjoyed

intermittent popularity among Indo-Fijian listeners over the past two decades. As

discussed in chapter 8, recordings by Indo-Caribbean artists such as Sundar Popo

featuring a mix of "Trinidad Bhojpuri" and English appeared on the radio in Fiji in the

early 1990s. More recently, Indo-Fijian music fans in online discussion groups reveal a

preference for chutney-soca artists such as the Indo-Trinidadian singer Rikki Jai. Given

chutney's recognizable roots in Bhojpuri folk music, including its harmonium-dholak-

dhantdl core, these recordings provided an important precedent in Fiji for the reception of

the Bhojpuri VCDs. By the time the Bhojpuri material entered the Indo-Fijian melodic

repertoire, it did so with deep, lateral diasporic associations. A sense of cultural and

musical kinship (although largely imagined) has developed with other South Asian "labor

diaspora" communities, particularly among twice-migrant groups. Ram described this

sentiment to me, based on a rare example of contact and cultural sharing. During his

tertiary education in New Delhi, Ram met a folk ensemble touring from Mauritius. He

describes the encounter: "There was a group from Mauritius and they were exactly the

same as us—the language, the looks, the Bhojpuri songs. They did a number with a dance

on a Bhojpuri type of song. It was like our sohar. Then I got very inspired, so I did a

Bhojpuri number. And they wanted to hear another one and another one."

class in Fiji, Surinam, Mauritius, Guyana, [and] Trinidad...." Source: "Bhojpuri, the People,"www.bhojpuri.org. Accessed January 21, 2008.

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Conclusion

In a recent essay, Vijay Naidu, an Indo-Fijian academic, describes noticing two of

his compatriots at an Indian gathering in Sydney. The two stood out among the

subcontinental Indians that surrounded them: "[T]hey walked with a different swagger

and spoke with an unmistakable Pacific lilt; their Hindi was embarrassingly

ungrammatical. Their looks, too, placed them apart from the general monotony of fair,

rounded Punjabi faces; they were darker, muscular, sinewy, working class to the core"

(2004b: 113-14). If the Indo-Fijians, through political marginalization, landlessness, and

economic insecurity, have transitioned from immigrant to emigrant, then they have

arrived as "twice migrants" in new, multicultural spaces that serve to highlight the

uniqueness—and strength—of their own cultural identities. Following chapter 8, which

privileged the lens of nationalism to interpret the role of cultural performance in the

processes of ethnic representation and nation making, this chapter has sought to expand

my perspective on Indo-Fijian music to encompass the transnational reach of its sources,

performers, and performance contexts. With nearly a third of all Indo-Fijians now

residing in the Pacific Rim metropols of New Zealand, Australia, and North America, the

accelerated flows of people, media, goods, capital, ideas, and—yes—music have mapped

a truly transnational Indo-Fijian community, interconnected and reinforced by the

electronic conduits of the internet. During the course of my research in Auckland, New

Zealand, I observed a high retention of the Indo-Fijian religious and musical practices

described in earlier chapters, including the establishment of religious organizations and

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musical groups that simultaneously maintain and subvert subethnic identifications such as

"North Indian" versus "South Indian."

I focus in this chapter on two case studies of musical performance that address the

dominant themes of the twice-migrant Indo-Fijian experience as I understand them. Both

involve an encounter with India—through interpersonal contact with subcontinental

Indians on the one hand and through the consumption of transnational Indian media on

the other. At the center of the first case study is the Ramayana recital, which continues in

Auckland under the stewardship of Ramayan mandalis in much the same style as in Fiji.

In their discourse about Indo-Fijian (Hindu) identity, my field consultants highlighted the

Ramayana recital as a particularly efficacious religious practice for its participatory

format, intensity of devotion, domesticity, regularity, and caste egalitarianism (apart from

the Brahman pandit, of course). Critically, they reached this assessment through contact

with the more established community of subcontinental Indians in Auckland, who they

consider to be urbanite, business-mined, and detached from the village roots of "proper"

Hindu practice. Ironically, in the subtle competition between subcontinental Indians and

Indo-Fijians to represent the "Indian" ethnicity to New Zealand at large, the latter

emphasize their "Fijian" roots: the ruptures of the indenture experience that nonetheless

preserved a bhakti-rich, family-based religious practice while shedding the constraints of

caste still clung to by subcontinental Indians. The music of the recital itself, once

disentangled, reveals sonic links to the rural, girmitiya past (through its instrumentation

and folk music base), the reverence for international Ramayan expounders and

semiclassical bhajan singers (through imitation and musical quotation), and the

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engagement with (an imagined) India (through the musical parody of film songs).

Importantly, Indo-Fijians in Auckland consider the combination of all three sources to be

a uniquely "Fijian" creation, particularly viable in religious practice.

The second case study focuses on the Indo-Fijian encounter with Indian

transnational media, particularly a series of Bhojpuri-language VCDs featuring stage

shows of narrative folk music and dance. In 2006, the recordings gained a huge following

in Fiji, and Indo-Fijians, accustomed to incorporating Bollywood melodies into local folk

and devotional music through parody (borrowing), quickly integrated the Bhojpuri

material into their tambura bhajans, kirtans, lok geets, and qawalis. The special appeal of

the Bhojpuri recordings derived from the consumers' recognition of the Bhojpuri music-

culture as antecedent to their own—the Bhojpuri language reminded some of Fiji Hindi,

particularly as spoken by their parents or grandparents, and the music sounded fast,

catchy, and very familiar. Furthermore, the rustic, pastoral character of the Bhojpuri

material dovetailed with a local narrative that locates authenticity in the (rural) past.

While not always consciously articulated as such, the embrace of the Bhojpuri melodies

signaled a veneration of the Indo-Fijian's girmitiya heritage. Although this veneration

largely bypassed any real engagement with the modern nation-state of India (which

remained an essentially imagined place), it created the potential for linkages with other

former indentured communities laterally across the South Asian diaspora. For Indo-

Fijians in Auckland and other locales of the twice-migrant diaspora, the consumption of

the Bhojpuri VCDs suggests a unified popular culture shared by Indo-Fijians in a vast

transnational community. In these ways, the Bhojpuri trend demonstrates how the

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members of a local music-culture receive, variously interpret, and make locally

meaningful transnational media and, in process, reveal various points of geographic and

sentimental attachment.

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Section V

Conclusions

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Chapter 10. Conclusions: Sounding a Community of Sentiment

Following the sites of Indo-Fijian musical performance, the ethnographic focus of

this dissertation has moved from nineteenth-century rural India, across the kalapani

("black waters") to the sugarcane plantations of Fiji, into the free settlements of rural

western Viti Levu, into the urban neighborhoods of Lautoka, and across the sea once

more to the multicultural hub of Auckland, New Zealand. A focus on the constitution of

"community," which I argue is co-implicative with musical performance, threads each

chapter. In one sense, the community I write about, broadly defined in terms of religion,

is the orthodox Hindu (Sanatani) group, the clear majority in the Indo-Fijian population.

The centrality of musical performance—particularly singing—in the practice of

Hinduism in Fiji makes its study through the lens of musical anthropology so productive.

In another sense, the community I discuss is the Indo-Fijian community writ large,

although here too shades of "subethnicity" such as Muslim, Gujarati, and even "South

Indian" Hindu tend to enter my analysis vis-a-vis the dominant Sanatani majority. If

communities, even imagined ones, are about exclusion as much as embrace, their

formation and maintenance depends largely on the negotiating difference.

The element of difference is clearly felt in the historic trajectory of the Hindu

identities described in this dissertation. Out of the ruptures of the indenture experience,

Hinduism emerged as a contested space over which a number of sects claimed dominion.

Sanatan Dharm, the majority sect representing Ram-bhakti (Ram worship), gained its

coherence—its sense of identity—only through its protracted battle with the reformist

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Arya Samaj during the 1930s. Similarly, following independence and the departure of the

British in 1970, the indigenous Fijian Christians and the Indo-Fijian Hindus formed an

"othered" relationship, and religious organizations and places of worship proliferated. As

Indo-Fijian Hindus settled into the Pacific Rim locales of secondary migration they

encountered difference once again in the practices of subcontinental Indian Hindus, to

which they took exception. At each step in this process of community posturing and

coalescence, musical performance played a notable role. Hindu missionaries spread the

doctrines of Sanatan Dharm and Arya Samaj from behind their harmoniums, and the

debate continued long after their departure in village song challenges; the music of

Ramayan mandalis became a permanent fixture of Fiji's soundscape during the post-

independence "Hindu efflorescence"; and Indo-Fijian twice migrants valorized their own

tambura bhajans and Ramayana recitals as particularly efficacious Hindu practices.

I do not claim in this dissertation that music making operates as an independent or

even primary force in constructing identities or communities, but I do insist that it

functions with a distinction derived from its intrinsic qualities and capacities. I have

approached Indo-Fijian musical performance, or music-culture, primarily through my

field consultants' discourse about music and the discourse of the music itself—that is,

what people claim music does and what they actually do with it. As a discursive practice,

musical performance excels at signaling difference, but it also harnesses the sentiment of

attachment to concepts of time and place and points imaginatively at other possibilities

for being. In this concluding chapter, I present four brief sections that discuss the

interrelated ways that Indo-Fijian musical performance intersects with the formation of

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community, variously conceived. Each of these four processes draws (to varying degrees)

on the discourse of "viable authenticity," which claims that certain musical practices

(aesthetics, repertoires, instruments, etc.) carry an inherent (and somehow superior)

efficacy in the context of Hindu ritual.

Drawing the Boundaries of Community through Song

One perspective on music and community to emerge from my research posits that

the actual sites of musical performance demarcate the shared space of a community. This

phenomenon is particularly evident in the rural areas of western Viti Levu, such as the

Sabeto Indian settlement described in chapter 6. In its most localized application, this

occurs at individual homesteads when a pandit sings the Hanumdn Calisa in the course of

administering the rot-pujd for the protector deity Hanuman. As the householder raises

Hanuman's flag, it is the pandit's auspicious song that sonically cleanses the property,

imbuing the boundaries of the homestead with a protective force. A collection of

homesteads, although disparately situated among sugarcane fields often kilometers apart,

gains an imagined semblance of community through the householders' participation in a

single religious/musical ensemble, such as a Ramayan mandali.

This phenomenon is perhaps best demonstrated through the activities of the Faag

mandali, a group of men from (usually) contiguous homesteads who convene annually to

sing the repertoire of songs for the Phagua (Holi) festival. Drawing on the discourse of

"rural memory," the Faag (or chautal) musical style claims a direct link to the girmitiya

past and resists the influences of popular Hindi film music that pervade other genres. The

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Faag performance style with its fast, boisterous, but tightly organized singing correlates

iconically with the spirit of "controlled abandon" that characterizes the color-play of the

festival. As they visit each member's homestead in procession singing chautal, the

members of the Faag mandali literally map the borders of their community, their

"village." In the case of the Faag competition, Faag mandalis representing various

villages or settlements converge for a single evening of chautal singing. Although

ostensibly a competition, participants revision the event as a sammelan, a "coming

together," which in this case engenders a face-to-face meeting of a regional community.

A similar community inventory occurs in other large performance-centered public Hindu

festivals, such as Ramlila.

Performing Music, Contesting Community

The second type of relationship between music and community is a bit more

complex, as it involves the mechanisms by which communities are internally constituted

(and contested) at the sites of musical performance. By starting at the locus of

performance—in this example, a Ramayana recital—we can consider several subject

positions and disentangle two interrelated processes: controlling the discourse of the

event (primarily the religious message) and negotiating the makeup of the community

that is present to receive it. At the center of the ritual is a text: the Rdmcaritmdnas, the

vernacular Ramayana designed by its author Goswami Tulsidas to be sung in rhyming

verses. The Rdmcaritmdnas is the seat of Hindu authority in Fiji, but its meaning and

didactic message is—critically—mediated at the site of its performance by it interpreters

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and expounders. Control of the text's exegesis, therefore, begets religious authority, and

control of the exegesis is greatly aided by singing ability and a flare for performance.

The cultural actors that vie for this authority, including the Brahman pandit, the

(usually non-Brahman) pracharak, and the egalitarian Ramayan mandali ensemble,

bolster their positions through claims about what is viably authentic in musical

performance. Like the Faag mandali, most Ramayan mandalis invoke the discourse of

"rural memory" based on continuity with the past, particularly the perceived practices of

girmitiya predecessors. This claim of "tradition" is most clearly articulated through the

use of the typical Indo-Fijian folk ensemble of harmonium, dholak, dahda tdl, and other

idiophones but also in statements about the girmitiya origins of melodies or styles of

presentation. At the same time, some pandits and pracharaks may eschew certain local

musical attributes (such as fast tempos and loudness) or instruments (such as the dahda

tdl) in favor of a more "refined" music for their recitals. At play here is the discourse of

classicization, which takes many forms, but the most common is the musical quotation of

well-known semiclassical bhajan refrains (text and melody) from the Hindi film music

repertoire or those in use by famous India-based Ramayana expounders. The viable

authenticity of classicization lies in its co-implication with the project of Sanskritization,

and the use of these semiclassical bhajans functions to shore up the singer's religious

capital, which translates into authority. Additionally, the spread of these transnational

melodies (such as "Om jay jagdish hari") has a standardizing effect on recital

performance and connects Indo-Fijian singers and listeners to the soundtrack of a

"global" or "universal" Hinduism—another imagined community. In practice, most

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religious leaders or groups maintain a balance between the musical elements of "rural

memory" and classicization.

The stepwise sequence of the Ramayana recital itself, designed to welcome Ram

as a metaphoric houseguest, reveals a standardized song repertoire and a unity of practice

indicative of a Fiji-wide Sanatani community. But the membership of this community is

negotiated in microcosm at the site of performative rituals like the Ramayana recital,

since the mediated discourse of the Rdmcaritmdnas contributes to Indo-Fijian

enculturation and a shared sense of ethnicity. The community constituted at Ramayana

recitals—and sustained through the sentiment of satsang (fellowship with the virtuous)—

must contend with issues of gender, age, and subethnicity. Ramayan mandalis, the music

ensemble that actually sings the Ramayana, are typically all-male ensembles, and the

members' female kin generally compose the "audience" of devotees (women may also

form their own all-female religious/musical ensembles). A few mandalis, however, use

the locus of Ramayana recitals to challenge the inherited Indian convention of gender-

segregated performance by mixing male and female singers in the same ensemble. In

terms of age, young people make the Ramayana recital relevant to their lives by

collapsing the sacred with the popular through the discourse of "Bollywood." They

accomplish this through the musical parody (tune borrowing) of popular Hindi film songs

that they apply to the sacred texts of the recital (this is also widely practiced with tambura

bhajan, kirtan, and other genres). Fashioned as a "most reliable archive of popular hopes

and disillusionment," in the words of Manas Ray, Bollywood has the "ability to locate

itself in the locus of influential and contesting definitions of 'Indianness'" (2000: 176).

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Finally, in terms of subethnicity, Hindus of South Indian descent may be included in the

satsahg of "mixed" Ramayan mandalis (having members of both North and South Indian

heritage), but they just as often form their own Ramayan mandalis of all-South Indian

membership. This fluidity reflects the South Indian Hindu's dual access to the ritual

practices of North Indian-derived Ram-bhakti worship and South Indian-derived Shakta

(goddess) worship.

Performance as Productive Representation: Envisioning National Community

If the process of constituting the Indo-Fijian Sanatani community hinges on the

control of its central religious texts, the envisioning of a "national community" inclusive

of Indo-Fijians is dependent on the control of key representations. The agents involved in

this contest include state-level figures such as politicians, bureaucrats, and military

officials and the "ordinary" citizenry such as singers, dancers, and religious leaders.

Considering the impact of both sets of agency—top-down and bottom-up forces—is

central to Epeli Hau'ofa's revisioning of the Pacific as an interconnected "sea of islands"

rather than disconnected "islands in a far sea." He writes, "Only when we focus on what

ordinary people are actually doing, rather than on what they should be doing, can we see

the broader picture of reality" (Hau'ofa 1994: 156-57).

Cultural performance, conceived as a productive representation, is one of the

primary sites through which ordinary Indo-Fijians negotiate the constitution of their

community (as a national collective) and broadcast this vision to others. Many of the

individuals involved in this projection, including music instructors, choreographers,

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museum directors, and tour agents, emphasize the discourse of classicization.

Consequently, performative representations of the "Indo-Fijian community" tend to

emphasize Indian classical or semiclassical music and dance and thus bypass local

histories of indenture and associated folk styles of musical performance.

As discussed in chapter 8, it is typically these classical Indian performance styles

(Hindustani art music, kathak, bharata ndtyam, or kuchipudi) that enter into cross-

cultural performances designed to represent the nation-state of Fiji for local and

international audiences. My primary example is a collaborative dance performance

featuring a mixed group of Indo-Fijian and indigenous Fijian dancers. Although the

choreographer signals "Indianness" primarily through the foundational style of classical

Indian dance, she also gives the Indo-Fijian dancers "Fijian" and "Pacific" dance

movements and indexes multiple locations (India, Fiji, the wider Pacific, and beyond)

through the accompanying music. The representation is productive not because it reflects

extant national identities or ethnic realities, but because it embodies their possibility in

performance and projects this vision into the national consciousness. In terms of the

political project, the question becomes whether the representation is radical enough to

escape (or shatter) the dominant multicultural paradigm of Fijian politics in which

discrete cultures coexist in an asymmetric relationship weighted toward indigenous Fijian

paramountcy. Clearly, the ethnonationahst members of the SDL government felt that this

particular collaborative dance did not achieve this break, and they appropriated the dance

(and its dancers) to represent their own conservative vision of national reconciliation

during the politically sensitive inter-coup period (2000-2006). By contrast, the

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indigenous Fijian singers of the Hindu repertoire (the second case study of chapter 8)

rupture the multicultural paradigm completely by transcending the requisite correlation

between the performer's ethnicity and the ethnicity represented. Yet the productivity of

this alternative representation is limited due the small number of such singers and their

marginal place in the national imaginary.

Sonic Connections of Sentiment in Transnational Community

During the course of my research, the intersection of musical performance and

transnational identity emerged most clearly in terms of global media (mediascape) and

travel (ethnoscape). This combination was powerfully illustrated one evening in

Auckland when my Indo-Fijian companions played an amateur DVD recording of a

tambura bhajan competition held in Sacramento between two Fiji-based bhajaniyds. Such

local media circulates widely around the Pacific Rim, but India-based transnational media

travels further and with greater saturation. I have already noted how Hindi film songs and

semiclassical bhajans have permeated Indo-Fijian music. The case study of the Bhojpuri

VCD series, widely parodied in Indo-Fijian "local folk music," demonstrates that

listeners can also receive and reimagine popular transnational music via the discourse of

"rural memory." Indo-Fijians in Fiji and its diaspora recognized something of their own

girmitiya heritage in the rhythms and melodies of the Bhojpuri material, and the practice

of (re)incorporating these sounds into their bhajans, kirtans, and qawalis revealed a unity

of practice across a transnational community. Interestingly, this engagement with

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Bhojpuri culture aroused a sense of fellowship not with the modern nation-state of India,

but with other former colonies of indenture such as Trinidad and Tobago.

Apart from media circuits, Indo-Fijian twice migrants in large, multicultural urban

centers like Auckland usually encounter India in the form of their subcontinental Indian

neighbors. Typically, this meeting has been marked not by recognition, but by a sense of

distinction. As latecomers to Auckland's "Indian" demographic, Indo-Fijians felt slighted

by their subcontinental Indian counterparts and cast them in turn as urbanite and

corrupted by modernity. This "othering" begot a corresponding valorization of their own

girmitiya heritage and a pride in their distinctive Indo-Fijian cultural practices. This

positioning is particularly evident in discourse about religion, as Indo-Fijians claim that

their domestic, participatory Ram-bhakti practices represent a "truef Hinduism that their

subcontinental Indian neighbors have lost. Significantly, the locus of this discourse is the

Ramayana recital, a site of performance where this Hindu identity is enacted and

perpetuated. In my analysis, it is partly through the encounter with their Indian other in a

location of displacement that Indo-Fijians develop an awareness of the uniqueness of

their music—a distinctive composite shaped by all three variants of the discourse of

viable authenticity: "rural memory," Bollywood, and classicization.

Coda

Following the May 2000 coup, Swami Maharaj, the president of the Lautoka

branch of the Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha, gave a radio interview on the BBC

on the subject of the Indo-Fijian exodus.

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Maharaj: There are a lot of countries that are taking migrants like Australia, NewZealand, Canada, and the [United] States. The farmers are, anyway,displaced. They've been losing their leases from last year and they've gotnowhere to go. And the government in this situation is unable to help...

Reporter: It sounds to me like you're saying that the best future for ethnic IndianFijians is a future outside of Fiji.

Maharaj: Well, if the [Indo-Fijian] population is reduced to, say, about 25 to 30percent, we should not have a problem because Fijians will not bethreatened in their political dominance, which is their fear at the moment.

Reporter: That's a very passive reaction, if I might say so.

Maharaj: Well, we haven't got any choice. With the army and police in their hands,and the land in their hands—we are a landless community here. What dowe do?360

The title of this dissertation describes the Indo-Fijian community as a

"community of sentiment." My intent is to capture something of the pathos articulated in

this exchange, a particular kind of emotional attachment—tinged with frustration and

pragmatism—that arises from the condition of being "landless" in one's homeland. The

2000 coup of which Maharaj speaks removed Mahendra Chaudhry from power, the first

prime minister of Fiji to be sworn into office with his hand on a copy of the Ramayana.

Four years later, Chaudhry appeared as the chief guest at the Fiji Festival in Hayward,

California. He told the (mostly Indo-Fijian) crowd in attendance: "I firmly believe that

you all should identify yourselves as Fijian Americans even though this right of being

This BBC broadcast aired June 4, 2000. An excerpt appears as an audio file on the Indo-Fiji Actionwebsite, http://www.angelfire.com/me2/kulacoco/swamimaharaj.html#thesis. Accessed January 14, 2008.

434

called a Fijian is denied to us in our homeland of Fiji."361 Although not a twice migrant

himself, Chaudhry correctly gauged the ties of sentiment that bind migrant Indo-Fijians

to the island nation of their birth. At the same time, I employ "community of sentiment"

in the more specific sense intended by Arjun Appadurai: an imagined transnational

community coalesced, in part, by the collective (and affective) experience of globally

distributed mass media (1996: 8). Fiji may have the pull of homeland, but Indo-Fijian

identity is, ultimately, a transnational identity configured—and sounded—in relation to

multiple concepts of time and place.

361This statement appears in his message printed in the festival program magazine (Fiji Cultural andSports Association 2004), although he made similar statements in his public address from the stage. Myemphasis.

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APPENDIX 1: Research Consent Form

CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH

The Legacy of the Ramayana in Contemporary Indo-Fijian Music and Culture

You are asked to participate in research conducted by Kevin C. Miller, B.A., M.A., from the Department ofEthnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Findings from this research will contributeto Mr. Miller's Ph.D. dissertation. You were selected as a possible participant because you are a FijianNational of Indian descent, eighteen-years-old or older, who expresses an interest in music, and is fluent inEnglish. This research project will provide Mr. Miller with a clearer perspective on the importance ofmusic to the daily practices and annual rituals of Hinduism in Fiji, especially as it relates to the Ramayanaepic.

• PROCEDURES: If you agree to participate, you may be asked to do the following:1) To fill out a simple two-page questionnaire about your musical preferences (approx. 5-10 minutes)

2) To be interviewed by Mr. Miller (location, length, and number of interviews to be agreed upon bythe participant and Mr. Miller).

3) To have your interview or performance recorded on audio or videotape by Mr. Miller.

• PARTICIPATION:Participation is voluntary; no payment will be given.Any participant who wishes to remain anonymous may do so, in which case Mr. Miller will notinclude your name in any written or recorded format.You can choose whether to participate or not. You may withdraw at any time without consequences ofany kind. You may also refuse to answer any questions you don't want to answer.You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You arenot waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research. If youhave questions regarding your rights as a research subject, contact the Office for Protection ofResearch Subjects, 2107 Ueberroth Building, UCLA, Box 951694, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1694,(310)825-8714.If you have any questions or concerns regarding this research, please feel free to contact Kevin C.Miller at xxxxxx@ucla.edu, or (310) XXX-XXXX (in the United States). His faculty sponsor isAnthony Seeger, (310) XXX-XXXX (also in the United States) or xxxxxx@ucla.edu.

• RECORDING AGREEMENTBy signing below you give your permission to be audio or video recorded and /or photographed as partof Kevin C. Miller's dissertation research on Indo-Fijian music, and understand that these recordingswill be used for scholarly and educational purposes only, in accordance with applicable U.S. copyrightlaw. In accordance with UCLA's Use Policy, these recordings will not be reproduced for any otherpurposes without your expressed, written permission. Participants may review and edit recorded tapes.One free copy of the recording is available to the participant upon request. When Mr. Miller'sresearch has been completed all data and recordings may be copied and deposited into the UCLAEthnomusicology Archive for long term preservation and controlled access.

| SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT |/ understand the procedures described above. My questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and Iagree to participate in this research. I have been given a copy of this consent form.

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APPENDIX 2: Survey

Questionnaire

You are asked to participate in research conducted by Kevin C. Miller, B.A., M.A., from theDepartment of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Findings from thisresearch will contribute to Mr. Miller's Ph.D. dissertation, which is under the guidance of Prof.Anthony Seeger, UCLA. This research project will provide Mr. Miller with a clearer perspectiveon the importance of music to the daily lives and religious activities of Fiji citizens of variousbackgrounds.

Instructions: Please take a few moments to answer the following questions. There are no"correct answers"—I am interested in your experience. You are welcome to leave answers blank.Thank you for participating!

1) Would you consider yourself a fan of music? Yes No Maybe

2) What is your favorite kind of music? (please be specific, even if you don't think I've heard ofit)

3) What do you like best about this music?

4) Who are your favorite performers?

5) Do you often hear this music in a live performance, like a concert, nightclub, or gathering?Please describe.

6) Do you listen to music on the radio? What kind of music and what stations?

7) Do you listen to music online (on the computer) or through some other digital device? Pleasedescribe.

8) Do you discuss music online (on the computer) with friends or chat groups? Please describe.

9) Do you purchase music on compact disc, audiocassette, or DVD? If so, where do you shop foryour music?

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10) If not, how do you acquire your music?

11) Do you watch Indian (Hindi) films? Yes No

12) If yes, how important is the musical soundtrack (the songs) for your enjoyment?Very important Important Somewhat important Not Important

13) Does your religious practice require or encourage you to make music or sing? Pleasedescribe.

14) Do you like to perform music yourself? Please describe.

About You: I am not requesting your name for this survey; however, you are welcome to providethe following information...

Gender : M F Age: 18-25 26-30 31-3536-40 41-50 51-6061-70 71-80 80+

Residence: In what part of Fiji were you raised? Examples: "Suva area" or "Kadavu"

Heritage/Ancestry:Indigenous Fijian Indo-Fijian

Chinese Pacific Islander ( )Other:

If Indo-Fijian:Does your family come from a particular part of India? For example, your grandparentsor great-grandparents. Check all that apply:

North India/General North India/Punjab GujaratSouth India/Andhra Pradesh South India/Tamil NaduOther:

Religious background: Do you or your family practice a particular religion?I prefer not to answer Buddhism Christianity HinduismIslam Jainism Sikhism Zoroastrianism/ParsiOther or more specific:

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APPENDIX 3: Summary of Rdmcaritmdnas (Ramayana) Narrative

Bal kand: Following numerous invocations, we hear of Sati's repudiation by Shiva, her

self-emulation, and return as Parvati. After a lengthy description of Shiva and Parvati's

wedding, Shiva narrates the various reasons for Ram's appearance as a human on earth.

Following Ram's birth and childhood, the sage Vishvamitra enlists the young Ram and

his brother Lakshman to eradicate demons that are disrupting the rituals of the Brahmans.

During their travels, Ram frees Ahalya from her cursed, petrified state. Upon reaching

Mithila, Ram meets Sita and the two fall in love. Ram wins Sita's hand in marriage in a

contest to string Shiva's giant bow, upsetting a host of suitors, including the demon king

Ravan. Following their wedding, Ram returns to Ayodhya with his bride.

Ayodhya kand: As Ram prepares for his coronation, the gods (knowing his destiny)

pervert the mind of Manthara, the handmaiden of Kaikeyi, one of Raja Dashrath's three

wives. Manthara convinces Kaikeyi that her own son, Bharat, should be made Raja

Dashrath's successor rather than Ram. Recalling two long-promised boons, Kaikeyi

forces Raja Dashrath to install Bharat as king and banish Ram to the forest for fourteen

years. Raja Dashrath yields to her requests, but later dies from the grief. Ram goes

willingly to the forest and is accompanied by Sita and Lakshman. The three encounter

many sages and devotees during their wanderings. Meanwhile, Bharat and his brother

Shatrughna return to the kingdom to find the people in mourning; Bharat rejects the

throne and pursues Ram into exile. Meeting Ram, Bharat proves his devotion and returns

to Ayodhya with Ram's sandals, which he places on the throne.

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Aranya kdnd: Ram, Lakshman, and Sita continue to wander, blessing the sages and

slaying demons. After Surpanakha, Ravan's sister, affronts Sita, the former is mutilated

by Lakshman and returns in a rage to Lanka, Ravan's kingdom. At this point, Sita enters

the fire, leaving a "shadow Sita" in her place. Ravan takes the form of a beggar, distracts

Ram and Lakshman with a golden deer, and abducts Sita, with whom he becomes

infatuated. Beginning their search for Sita, Ram and Lakshman encounter the hermit

Shabari and the sage Narada.

Kiskindha kand: Ram and Lakshman meet Hanuman, who takes them to the monkey king

Sugriva. Ram agrees to help Sugriva slay his estranged, power hungry brother, Bali. Ram

enlists the monkeys and bears to search for Sita, and the animals learn that Sita is held

captive on the island of Lanka.

Sundar kdnd: As the Son of the Wind, Hanuman leaps over the ocean to Lanka and fights

his way into the city. He finds Sita who gives him a piece of jewelry to show Ram as

proof of her whereabouts. Hanuman is captured, but escapes and sets fire to Lanka. With

Hanuman's return to the shore, Ram, Lakshman, and the animal army prepare for battle

with Lanka. Meanwhile, Ravan's wife pleads with him to return Sita, as does his brother

Vibhishan, realizing Ram's greatness.

Lankd kand: Ram's army builds a bridge of stones across the sea and arrives at Lanka.

Despite continued pleas from his wife and advisers, Ravan is determined for battle, and

the war commences. Lakshman is gravely injured, but is saved when Hanuman retrieves

an entire mountain containing medicinal plants. Ravan enlists his sons for the battle,

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including the giant Kumbhakama. All are defeated. Finally Ravan battles Lakshman and

Hanuman, but ultimately meets Ram in combat and is slain. Ram installs Vibhishan as

the king of Lanka and calls for Sita. To prove her chastity, Sita asks Lakshman to build a

fire, which she enters—the "real" Sita emerges free of social stigma. Ram, Sita, and

Lakshman return to Ayodhya on the Pushpaka, an aerial car.

Uttar hand: Bharat enjoys an emotional reunion with Ram and Lakshman, and Ram is

enthroned as the king of Ayodhya. A period of Ramraj (Ram's benevolent rule) begins,

and Ram and Sita have twin sons, Luv and Kush. At this point in the narrative, Parvati

asks Shiva about Kak Bhushundi, the crow who recited the Ramayana to Garuda.

Through Shiva, we hear of Kak Bhushundi's history and great devotion to Ram. Through

his own narrative, Kak Bhushundi describes the horrors of the Kali Yuga (the present

Dark Age), expands on the difference between knowledge and devotion, and provides a

summary of the entire epic. Tulsidas concludes his work with a celebration of the

Ramayana's greatness and a prayer for Ram's followers.

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GLOSSARY

aldp - An introductory part of a tambura bhajan that consists of a brief vocal statement,usually a single, stepwise ascent from the tonic to the major third.

alha - A narrative verse associated with Rajput epics.

arati - A gesture of worship with a lighted

diya, camphor, or oil on a dish.

arkati — An unlicensed Indian assistant to indenture recruiter.

arth — "Purpose" or "meaning"; the commentary and exegesis printed in theRdmcaritmdnas.

Arya Samaj- A reformist Hindu group that reveres the Vedas as the sole text ofHinduism. A minority group in Fiji.

Arya Samaji/Samaji - An individual or organization that follows the Arya Samaj.

Awadhi - A vernacular dialect of Hindi. The Rdmcaritmdnas is written in Awadhi.

Ayodhya - A city in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh; also the seat of Ram's kingdomin the Ramayana.

B

baishwara (baisvara) — A long-format subgenre of the Faag repertoire of songs for Holi(Phagua); similar to jati (jati).

baja — "Musical instrument"; the term for the harmonium and other melodic instrumentsin Fiji.

barn - "Verse" or "teachings"; bhajan refrains used as a chorus in Ramayana recital thatderive from semiclassical bhakti bhajans popularized by Hindi films, famousIndian singers, or well-known international Ramayana expounders.

bharata ndtyam — A "classical" dance style associated with the state of Tamil Nadu inSouth India.

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bhajan (bhajan) - A generic term for devotional singing.

bhajan qawali - One of the three forms of qawali in Fiji, a devotional, didactic song formin qawali style based on Hindu texts.

bhajania — A singer of Hindu devotional songs.

bhakti (bhakti) — A popular form of devotional Hinduism that emphasizes personal, directdevotion to god, often in the form of Ram or Krishna, through prayer and song.

bhatwaan — Second day of the Hindu three-day wedding ceremony on which female kinmassage the bride's and groom's skin with turmeric and oil and fry the rice (lava)that will be used in the marriage ceremony.

Bhojpuri - The Bhojpuri "belt" comprises western Bihar and the eastern UnitedProvinces (now Uttar Pradesh), the area from which many of the Indianindentured laborers originated. This area is home to the Bhojpuri dialect of Hindi.This term also refers to films and folksongs in the Bhojpuri dialect.

biraha — A folk music genre from the Bhojpurl-speaking region of North India that mayhave influenced qawali style in Fiji. This genre is now rare in Fiji.

bistar — "Expansion" or "development." A theme of a tambura bhajan that may be basedon a particular text such as the Ramayana or Mahabharata, a particular deity suchas Ram, Krishna, Shiva, or Devi, or a particular topic. Also vistar.

Bollywood - The nickname for the Hindi-language film industry based in Bombay(Mumbai), India.

Brahman - The highest caste in the Hindu hierarchy and the traditional priestly class.

buddha m a n g a r — "Old Tuesday"; the day that concludes the Phagua (Holi) season.

bure - The Fijian word for a traditional thatched dwelling.

C

calta - In Indo-Fijian music, the term for a fast tempo.

cauki bhajan - A genre of funerary bhajans sung by the Kabir Panthi sect so-named forcauka, a term referring to both the name of the ceremony and the square-shapedritual space where it takes place. Unlike tambura bhajan, the cauki bhajan is

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responsorial. In contemporary Fiji, the term refers most often to post-recitaldevotional singing sessions in which a group sits in a circle that is reminiscent ofa cauki, a round wooden board used for rolling rotis (flat bread).

caupai — A quatrain of short lines in the Rdmcaritmdnas.

chand - A quatrain of long lines in the Rdmcaritmanas.

chap — A tradition in which the singer inserts his (or her) name into the song's final line.

chautal (cautdl) - "Four beats"; a term for the songs of the Holi season, also known as"Faag," dominated by the Vaishnavite themes of Holi. The term also refers to aspecific long-format Faag subgenre.

dddrd - A six-beat meter.

dahda tal — "Stick" + "rhythm"; a percussion idiophone consisting of two pieces, avertically held rod made of iron (or steel) about a meter long, and a small,horseshoe-shaped beater that is used to strike it.

Dasahrd — The period (September-October) that precedes Diwali.

Degei - A precolonial Fijian snake deity. Many Indo-Fijians associate Degei with KaliyaNag, the snake king banished to a remote island by Krishna.

dhappala — A frame drum that forms part of the South Indian music ensemble essential toShakta rituals such as firewalking.

dholak (dholak) — A double-headed barrel membranophone, measuring about twenty totwenty-five inches (fifty to sixty-four centimeters) in length. One of the fewinstruments that is locally made in Fiji.

dholakiya or dholak-vadak - A dholak player.

dharmasdstra — A series of moral prescripts and divinely modeled social ideals.

dharmik qawali - Another name for bhajan qawali. Dharmik is the Hindi/Sanskrit wordfor "religious."

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Dlpdvall (Diwali) - The Hindu "festival of lights" and an official holiday in Fiji. Formost Indo-Fijian Hindus, this holiday celebrates the return of Ram from exile. Forthe Gujarati community in Fiji, this holiday honors Lakshmi, the goddess ofprosperity.

diya— An oil lamp used in Hindu devotional rituals.

dohd — A couplet with end-rhyming in the Ramcaritmdnas.

Dravidian - From the Sanskrit word drdvida, a term that describes the people, languages,and architecture of South India. Dravidian languages spoken by South Indianindentured laborers included Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada.

ektdr — In India, this term signifies long-necked, unfretted, plucked drone lute of the folkvariety. In Fiji, this instrument is called tamburd.

Faag - A term that describes the songs for the Holi (Phagua) season. Also known aschautal.

Fiji Hindi - A koine version of Hindi with influences from Bhojpuri, Awadhi, and BrajBhasha dialects, which is now the lingua franca of Indo-Fijians.

Fiji Labour Party - A political party founded in 1985 that ostensibly defends Indo-Fijianinterests, although the party itself is ethnically mixed. Prominent leaders haveincluded Dr. Timoci Bavadra and Mahendra Chaudhry, who was ousted in the2000 coup.

Fiji qawali - One of the three forms of qawali, a topical song form in qawali style thatemploys secular texts.

filmii - An adjective that signifies something (a song, a dance, etc.) from a Bollywoodmovie or in that style.

gaon - "Village" in Fiji Hindi.

gdyan — Songs.

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Ganesh - Hindu deity; the elephant-headed remover of obstacles and one of Shiva's sons,

ghazal - A semiclassical vocal genre with an Urdu text often featuring romantic themes.

girmit — Local term for the indenture system based on the pronounciation of "agreement"by Indian indentured laborers.

girmitiya - An Indian indentured laborer; the term comes from girmit, above.

Gita path - A recitation of the Bhagavad Gita during the thirteen- or sixteen-day Hindumourning period.

graha - An astrological reading and one of the duties that only Brahman pandits andpurohits can perform.

Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) - A consitutional body of the Fijian governmentcomposed of indigenous Fijian hereditary chiefs.

Gujarati - Indians who originate from the western state of Gujarat. Gujaratis arrived inFiji as "passenger" migrants to work mainly as merchants and jewelers.

H

Hanuman - The monkey general of Ram's army in the Ramayana and one of Ram'sgreatest intermediaries.

Hanuman Calisa — "Forty verses to Hanuman"; one of the best-known poems inHinduism that describes the deeds and attributes of Hanuman in forty rhymingcouplets attributed to Tulsidas.

harmonium - A portable, hand-pumped organ.

hawan — A fire-sacrifice ritual and one of the duties that only Brahman pandits orpurohits can perform.

Hindustani — "Indian"; a term that, in Fiji, indicates a person of North Indian origin.

Holi (Holi) — A Vaishnavite festival of renewal, also known as Phagua in Fiji. Holi ismarked by a repertoire of songs called "Faag" and rang khelna, ritualistic dousingwith with colored water and powder.

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Holika - The goddess who gives her name to Holi. The sister of Prahalad, the hero of theHoli story. Holika was burned to death while Prahalad was saved by Vishnu.

hori (hori) — A short-format or auxiliary genre associated with the Phagua (Holi) seasonthat may also be performed during Krishna Janmashtami.

hudda - A large double-headed barrel drum; part of the tdssd ensemble.

hurka - A double-headed hourglass pressure drum about fifteen inches (thirty-eightcentimeters) in length.

Indrajdl — Roughly, "black magic"; a set of practices that involve sorcerers (ojhds) and awhole constellation of protective amulets, cursed objects, and evil glances.

insdf- "Justice"; one of the main principles of the Indo-Fijian political movement in Fiji.

Islamic qawali - Also known as mazhabi qawali, one of the three forms of qawali. Thisform draws on themes from the Qur'an and Muslim history.

izzat — "Self-respect"; one of the main principles of the Indo-Fijian political movement inFiji.

jahaji bhai - "Ship brother"; a kinship relationship between girmityas that traveled to Fijion the same ship.

jati (jati)— From the Braj Bhasha adaptation of yati, meaning "ascetic," a long-formatsubgenre of the Faag repertoire of songs for Holi (Phagua); similar to baishwara(baisvara).

jhandd — A triangular red flag that honors Hanuman and signifies his presence, raisedduring a ceremony called rot-puja.

jhandd bhandhan - A flag or bannar raising ceremony, accompanied by song, that beginsmost public Sanatani events.

jhdnjh - A pair of three-and-a-half-inch (nine-centimeter) cymbals.

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jhika - A long sistrum associated with the Faag repertoire.

jhumar (jhumar) - Based on the root word jhum ("swaying"), a long-format subgenre ofFaag similar to chautal.

jndna — "Knowledge"; one of the main principles of the Arya Samaj.

jogira (jogird) — A short-format subgenre of the Faag repertoire that consists of humorous(even lewd) verses in rhyming couplets.

jhulao — "Swing-like movement"; a term for a moderate tempo.

jungli - "Wild" or "untamed."

K

Kabir Panth - A sect of Hinduism that reveres the medieval bhakti poet Kabir, claimedby both Hindus and Muslims. His mystical, nirguna bhajans reject brahmanicalparamountcy and usually carry a strong social or moral message. The KabirPanthis remain a minority sect in Fiji today.

kabira (kabira) - A short-format bhakti genre in a simple call and response format thatsingers often attach to the end of long-format songs of the Faag repertoire.

kaherva (kaharva) - An eight-beat meter.

kala pani — The "black waters" that separate India from the pollution of the outer world.By crossing these waters, North Indian Hindus endanger their caste status.

Kali - A Shakti goddesses particularly revered by South Indian Hindus in Fiji.

Kaliya Nag - The snake king who pollutes the Yamuna River, for which Krishnabanishes him to the distant island of Ramanaka, believed by some Indo-FijianHindus to be Fiji.

kand - A "book" of the Ramayana.

kanjari — A small frame drum particularly associated with cauki bhajan.

kartal - A pair of wooden clappers with inserted metal discs that is played with one hand.

kast — Trouble, disruption, or hardship.

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katha (katha) — "Story"; a multi-day exegesis of a Hindu text or story with musicalaccompaniment, e.g. a Ram katha features a recital of the Ramayana.

kathak - A "classical" dance style from North India.

kava - The plant piper methysticum, also known as yaqona (Fijian). Also known as"grog," the term also refers to the beverage made from the kava root, which hasanxiolytic (calming) effects and is widely consumed by both indigenous Fijiansand Indo-Fijians, especially men. It is made by pounding the root into a powder,which is then mixed with cold water.

kirtan (kartan) — A devotional hymn characterized by a leader-chorus responsorial style.

koro - "Village" in Fijian.

Krishna - One of the avatars of Vishnu and one of the central figures in Hindu bhaktiworship.

Krishna Janmashtami - A celebration of Krishna's birthday that features singing andexplication of various texts concerning Krishna, including Vishnu Purana, BrijBilas, and Prem Sagar.

kuchipudi — A "classical" dance style associated with Telugu-speaking South India.

L

Labasa - The largest town on Fiji's second-largest island of Vanua Levu that has a largeIndo-Fijian population.

lahahgd ndc - The "skirt dance" performed by male dancers dressed as women ortransgender specialists known as nacaniyd. Often humerous or farcical.

Lakshman - Ram's brother in the epic of the Ramayana.

Latest - A term used in Fiji Hindi to describe the use of popular melodies, particularlyfrom Bollywood (filmi) songs, in local Indo-Fijian music.

Lautoka - Fiji's second-largest city located on the western side of Viti Levu that grew uparound Fiji's largest sugarcane mill and, consequently, is home to a largepopulation of Indo-Fijians.

lali - A traditional Fijian "slit drum" idiophone.

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Lanka - The demon kingdom of the Ramayana epic, ruled by the demon king Ravan.

lok geet (lok git) - A "local folk music" genre generally associated with women singersbut also performed by men.

M

madrasi — A term that means "from Madras" generally used to describe an Indo-Fijian ofSouth Indian descent.

Mahila mandal - An all-female religious association that parallels the all-male Ramayanmandali, although less formally organized.

mandali (mandli) - A "small circle" or "group" of amateur devotional singers.

mandir — A Hindu temple.

mahgaldcaran — A series of benedictory and invocatory chants, a collection of mantra(Sanskrit or Vedic verses) and vandand (praise-verses), that begins a Ramayanarecital.

manjird - A small, cup-shaped pair of hand cymbals.

mantra — Sanskrit or Vedic verses.

Mariamman - A popular Shakti goddesses among Hindus of South Indian descent.

marsiyah - Dirges for Hussain performed during Muharram (Tazia).

maryddd purusottama — The "ideal man" embodied by Ram.

masi - A traditional cloth made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree pounded thinthat is similar to Polynesian tapa.

mataqali - An indigenous Fijian land-owning group.

maulvl - A Muslim teacher.

medolin — A narrow board zither that uses typewriter-like keys to stop the strings. Similarto the Indian bulbultarang, it is used to accompany tambura bhajan and qawali.

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meke - A broad term referring to "traditional" indigenous Fijian ensemble dance styleswith musical accompaniment and a sung narrative verse.

mila - The Sunni practice of praise-singing for Muhammad.

moksa — In Hindu theology, the liberation from the cycle of reincarnation.

mukh-srota — Literally, "foremost listeners"; the family that sponsors a religious event orvolunteers to be the lead group of devotees.

muqdbld - A live, competitive stage show that features a particular music genre such asbhajan or qawali. Muqdbld is the Urdu word; in Hindi it is pratiyogita.

murti - A statue that represents (and manifests) a particular deity.

musalmdn — The FijiHindi term for a Muslim.

N

nacaniyd - "Dancers"; male performers that play female roles in the Ramlila as well asentertain at weddings and other religious events. Some nacaniyd identify as gayor transgendered, others identify as heterosexual.

Ndda-brahma - Sacred, causal sound; a key principle in bhakti worship.

nal— A variation on the dholak (drum) that features multilayered drumheads similar tothat of the tabla.

nirguna - The concept of the deity as formless and without attributes, emphasized by thereformist Arya Samaj sect of Hinduism.

ojhds — Sorcerers and practitioners of Indra jal.

P

pancdyat - A colonial-era Indian mediating body based on the precedent of village Indiathat settled local disputes in Indian settlements. Later, these were transformed intoofficially recognized Indian Advisory Committees.

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pandit - A Hindu priest who must be of the Brahman caste. In general, the rites ofmarriage, pujd, hawan (fire-sacrifice ritual), and graha (astrological reading) areexclusively the domain of Brahman-born pandits and purohits.

path — The recital of a sacred text.

Phagua - The name in Fiji for the holiday of Holi, so called for the Hindu month ofPhdgun. Phagua is marked by a repertoire of songs called "Faag" and by playwith colored water and powder. Phagua further has come to signify social renewalwhile retaining elements of social inversion.

pitr-paks — The latter (darker) two weeks of the Hindu lunar month Bhddom (August-September) reserved for the remembrance of ancestors. Religious activities, suchas pujds and Ramayan path, generally cease for this period.

pracharak (pracharak) — Sometimes "parcharak," a (usually) non-Brahman Hindu laypreacher. Pracharaks can, in theory, be men or women.

Prahlad - The hero of the story that underpins Holi. Son of the hubristic Hiranyakashipuand brother to Holika, Prahlad is rewarded for his devotion and piety whenVishnu saves him from a fire that burns his sister to death.

prasad — A ritual meal usually composed of a vegetarian mixture of sweets, fruit, andsnacks that is offered first to the deity then consumed by the devotees.

pratiyogita — A live, competitive stage show that features a particular music genre suchas bhajan or qawali. Pratiyogitd is the Hindi word; in Urdu it is muqabla.

pravacan - "Exposition"; an interpretation or explication of a sacred text. The pravacanprovides the discursive body of the Ram katha.

pritibhoj (priti-bhoj) - "Banquet"; also known as bhatwaan, this is the second night ofthe three-day Hindu marriage ceremony that features lok geet or vivah git singing.

puja (pujd) - A Hindu worship ritual and one of the duties that, in general, only Brahmanpandits or purohits can perform.

pujari — A title of temple/officiating priest that is open to any caste, achieved through theindividual's "miraculous" abilities and leadership skills. The pujari title isespecially common in the context of South Indian Hindu rituals, such as theannualfiewalking puja

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Punjabi - Indians who originate from the northern state of Punjab. Most Punjabis arrivedin Fji as "passenger" migrants to work in agriculture and brought Sikhism to Fiji.

Puranas - Sacred Hindu texts that are particularly valued in the bhakti-oriented practicesof Sanatan Dharm.

purohit - A Hindu family priest who must be of the Brahman caste. In general, the ritesof marriage, puja, hawan (fire-sacrifice ritual), and graha (astrological reading)are exclusively the domain of Brahman-born pandits and purohits.

qawali - A particular style of local Indo-Fijian music characterized by solo singingaccompanied by harmonium, dholak, dahda tal, and jhanjh it is a staple ofwedding entertainment and stage shows. Qawali in Fiji has three types—Islamic,bhajan, and Fiji—and retains little connection with its roots in Sufi qawwali.

qawli - A singer of qawali.

R

rag - A mode that forms an integral part of North Indian classic music theory, althoughin Fiji this term is applied loosely, often with little understanding of its fullmeaning.

Raja Dashrath - Ram's father in the Ramayana epic.

Ram - Also Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu and the hero of the Ramayana epic. Ramis also one of the central figures in Hindu bhakti worship.

Ram bhagvan - "Lord Ram" or "Ram, the Supreme Being," Tulsidas' conception of Ramin the Ramcaritmdnas that deftly combines his saguna and the nirguna aspects.

Ram katha - A multi-day recital and exegesis of the Ramayana.

Ram Naumi {Ram navmi) — A nine-day Hindu festival that celebrates Ram's birth.

Ramakrishna Mission - A Hindu philanthropic society founded by Swami Vivekananda,a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, that is active in Fiji.

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Ramayan mandali - A group of amateur singers dedicated to the weekly recital of theRamayana; also the preeminent institution of Sanatan Dharm Hinduism in Fiji.

Ramayana - The Hindu epic that recounts the life and deeds of Ram, the seventh avatarof Vishnu. Several versions of this epic exist.

Rdmcaritmanas - The vernacular Awadhi-language retelling of the Ramayana authoredby Goswami Tulsidas c. 1574, and the central text of Sanatani Hindus in Fiji.

Ramlila (Ramlila) — A multi-day reenactment of the Ram story using actors, costumes,narration, and music that, ideally, should occur annually.

Ramraj— In the Ramayana epic, the golden era of Ram's benevolent rule. TheRdmcaritmdnas ends the epic at this point.

rang khelnd - The "color play" that is a central activity during Holi/Phagua wherecelebrants douse each other with colored water or powder.

rasiya - A short-format or auxiliary genre about Krishna associated with the Phagua(Holi) season that may also be performed during Krishna Janmashtami.

Ravan - The demon king and central villain of the Ramayana.

rot-pujd — A fundamental annual ritual for Sanatanis that honors Hanuman and ensureshis protection for the household. During the rot-pujd, the pandit recites theHanuman Calisa and raises the jhanda, which signifies Hanuman's presence.

Sabeto - A rural area south and slightly inland of Lautoka city situated in the SabetoValley that is the site of a large Indian settlement.

sada anand (sadanand) - "Everlasting happiness"; a short-format subgenre of the Faagrepertoire of songs for Holi (Phagua) that expresses gratitude and farewell.

sadhu - A Hindu acetic.

saf dil - A "clean heart"; an internal condition achieved through regular prayer and theavoidance or negotiation of "polluting" elements or actions.

saguna — The concept of the deity as incarnate and with attributes, emphasized by bhaktipractice and the Sanatan Dharm sect of Hinduism.

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sakhi — An end-rhyming couplet associated with the nirguna bhakti poets, particularlyKabir.

sammelan - "Gathering" or "coming together"; any organized gathering that bringsHindus together, such as musical events or conferences.

Sampuran Yag (sampurn yajna) - "Completion rite"; a special sammelan to celebratewhen a Ramayan mandali completes a full recitation of the Ramayana.

Sanatan Dharm - "Eternal religion"; an orthodox sect of Hinduism that emphasizesbhakti practices and reveres Tulsidas' Ramcaritmdnas. The majority Hindu sect inFiji.

Sanatani - An individual or organization that follows Sanatan Dharm.

Sangam - The shortened name of the Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam (United SouthIndian Union for the Truthful Path), an organization in Fiji that emphasizeseducation, South Indian language survival, and cultural preservation.

sahkh — A conch shell that is used as a musical instrument during certain Hindu rituals.

sdnti path - A mantra for peace that concludes a recital of the Ramayana.

sdrahgi - A bowed lute; one of the few instruments that was made locally in Fiji.

Sarasvati - The goddess of knowledge and music.

sardar (or sirdar) - The Indian middleman and enforcer who worked under the whiteoverseer in charge of indentured laborers.

sargam - Indian sol-fa syllables that form an integral part of North Indian classic musictheory.

sarod - A short-necked plucked lute without frets used in classical Indian music, taughtonly in the Indian Culture Centres in Fiji.

Sathya Sai Baba - A popular Indian religious figure who represents a large globalfollowing among Hindus with a modest contingent in Fiji.

satsahg — "Fellowship of the virtuous"; a worship gathering.

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sehnai - A double-reed aerophone that forms part of the South Indian music ensembleessential to Shakta rituals in Fiji such as firewalking.

sere ni cumu - A Fijian popular music genre based on guitar and ukulele.

shaadi — The third night of the three-day Hindu wedding ceremony.

Shabari - The elderly female ascetic of the Ramayana epic who receives the ninedisciplines of bhakti (navadha bhakti) from Ram.

Shaivite - One of the three major branches of Hinduism that focuses on Shiva-worship.

Shakta - One of the three major branches of Hinduism that focuses on goddess worship.A divine principle manifested by the goddesses Mariamman, Kali, and Ganga,typically part of South Indian Devi-worship practice.

Shiu katha - A multi-day recital and exegesis of the Shiva stories of the Shiva Puranaand other sources.

Shivratri - A celebration of Shiva's birth.

Shri Sanatan Dharm Pratinidhi Sabha (Representative Society of the Revered SanatanDharm) - Although the largest Hindu organization in Fiji, the Sabha has had alimited success influencing or regulating Ramayan mandalis. They also havestrong branches overseas.

Shri Sanatan Dharm Purohit Brahman Sabha - A special branch of the Pratinidhi Sabhathat oversees religious matters and organizes Brahman pandits and purohits(family priests) into a central organization responsible for temples, calendricaldates of rituals and festivals, the registry of marriage officers, and related matters.

siksd - "Instruction"; the goal of religious activities in addition to bhakti (devotion).

Sita - Ram's wife, the heroine of the Ramayana epic and the embodiment of pativrata,the ideal of the pious wife.

sitar - A long-necked plucked lute with frets used in classical Indian music, taught onlyin the Indian Culture Centres in Fiji.

sloka — A Sanskrit poetry meter or verse.

sohar - Songs to commemorate childbirth.

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Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) Party - A political party founded in 2001dominated by indigenous Fijian membership and a champion of indigenous Fijianinterests. Led by Laisenia Qarase.

sorathd — A couplet with middle-rhyming in the Rdmcaritmdnas.

sthdn - Short for bhagwdn sthdn ("God's place"), an area demarcated for deity worship.

sumarni — A local Indo-Fijian variation on sumiran, an invocatory prayer-song that opensmost Sanatani rituals.

sur - A drone aerophone that forms part of the South Indian music ensemble in Fiji.

Suva - Fiji's capital and its largest city, located on the eastern side of the largest island,Viti Levu.

tabla - A pair of drums used in Indian classical music that, in Fiji, is taught primarily inFiji Indian Culture Centres.

tal — A principle of rhythm that forms an integral part of North Indian classic musictheory, although in Fiji this term is applied loosely, often with little understandingof its full meaning.

tamburd - In Fiji, a single-string (or single-chorus) plucked drone lute, one of the fewinstruments that is made locally.

tambura bhajan - One of the oldest of local bhakti singing styles that is a fixture at Hindufunerary rites. This genre is characterized by solo singing accompanied by atamburd in addition to the core ensemble.

Tamil - One of the Dravidian languages of South India and the official language of thesoutheastern state of Tamil Nadu. Some South Indians in Fiji still speak Tamil.

tdssd — A high-pitched kettle drum that formed part of the drum ensemble for Tazia andstill appears in wedding processions in Fiji, especially in Vanua Levu.

taukei - The Fijian term for "Fijian" or "owner of the land," a term opposed to vulagi.

Tazia - The Shia Muslim festival also known as Muharram that commemorated themartyrdom of Hassan and Hussain, the Prophet's grandsons, in the battle of

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Karbala. The festival featured the construction and procession of tazids, modelsthat represented the tombs of the martyrs. This festival no longer occurs in Fiji.

tek - The refrain of a bhajan.

tekd - In Indo-Fijian vocal music, the term for a slow tempo.

telwaan - The first night of the three-day Hindu marriage ceremony.

terukkuttu - A Hindu folk-drama derived from Tamil-speaking South India that remainspopular in Fiji in the context of firewalking rituals and South Indian weddings.

tilak - An auspicious mark made with colored paste, usually on the forehead.

Tulsidas, Goswami - The sixteenth-century sage who authored the Rdmcaritmdnas in thevernacular Awadhi dialect.

Tulslkrt Ramdyana — "Ramayana composed by Tulsidas"; the most widespread edition ofthe Rdmcaritmdnas in use by Ramayan mandalis in Fiji that contains interpolatedstories (ksepak), which, although not composed by Tulsidas, employ the samepoetic meters.

U

ulara (ulara) — A short-format subgenre of the Faag repertoire meant to summarize orextend the narrative of the longer song to which it is attached.

Urdu - A language generally spoken by Muslims that is mutually intelligible with Hindi,although it draws some words from Persian and Arabic and is written in Perso-Arabic script.

Vaishnavite - One of the three major branches of Hinduism that focuses on Vishnu-worship.

Vanua Levu - Fiji's second-largest island that constitutes the Northern Division. It is lesspopulous than Viti Levu, and its largest city is Labasa.

Vedas - The earliest Hindu sacred texts comprised of the Rgveda, Yajurveda, Samveda,and Atharaveda. The Arya Samaj reveres the Vedas as the sole text of Hinduism.

458

visarjan - "Sending away" or "departing"; a concluding hymn that ends many Sanatanirituals.

vistdr - "Expansion" or "development." A theme of a tambura bhajan that may be basedon a particular text such as the Ramayana or Mahabharata, a particular deity suchas Ram, Krishna, Shiva, or Devi, or a particular topic. Also bistdr.

Viti Levu - Fiji's largest and most populous island that includes the two largest cities,Suva and Lautoka. Viti Levu comprises Fiji's Central Division.

vivdh git - A wedding song genre.

vulagi - Fijian for "visitor" or foreigner, a term that indigenous Fijians sometimes applyto Indo-Fijians in contrast to taukei.

yaqona — The plant piper methysiticum also known askava or "grog." The term alsorefers to the beverage made from the yaqona root, which has anxiolytic (calmingeffects and is widely consumed by both indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians,especially men. It is made by pounding the root into a powder, which is thenmixed with cold water.

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DISCOGRAPHY

Balak, Kanda Swamy. N.d. Bhajan 's by Ba 's Super Star Kanda Swamy Balak: Aman kiLalkaar. CD. Procera Music KSB CD 2610.

Calia Navyuak Ramayan Bhajan Faag Mandali of Navua. N.d. Faag Sangrah.Audiocassette. Procera Music CFM 2449.

Costello, Daniel Rae, producer. 2005. We Are Fiji. DVD, 37 min. A Tango MultimediaProduction.

Dayal, Shiu, and Balram. 2003. Live Hot Bhajan Muqabla: Shiu Dayal verses Balram.Audiocassette. Procera Music SSB 2538.

Krishna, Sushil. 1993. Sushil Krishna Sings Ghazals. Audiocassette. South PacificRecordings Ltd. SPR 231H.

Kumar, Anil. 1998. Kirtans, vol. 12: Jai Ramayan. Audiocassette. Procera Music AKK2273.

Nath, Shiu. N.d. Tambura Bhajan of Shiu Nath. Audiocassette. South Pacific RecordingsLtd. SPR 004H.

Pawan, Arjun. 2006. Bhakti Tambura Bhajans Presented by Arjun Pawan. CD. ProceraMusic APCD 2692.

Popo, Sundar. N.d. Trinidad's SundarPopo "Hot & Spicy" (Chutneys). Audiocassette.Windsor Records, distributed by Procera Music PFC 17.

Prasad, Hari. N.d. Qawalis ofHari Prasad, Lautoka. Audiocassette. South PacificRecordings Ltd. SPR 077H.

Prasad, Shalend, and Nitin Nilesh. 2006. Live Kirtans. CD. Audio Design Solutions07/2006.

Qalitu Ramayan Bhajan Faag Mandali. 1990. Special Faag Songs. Audiocassette.Procera Music QRM 708.

Raji, Ram. 1990. Ram Autarik: Lok Geet by Ram Raji. Audiocassette. South PacificRecordings Ltd. SPR 166H.

Ram ji, Mahant Maya. 2004. Chauki Bhajan. CD. Super Digital Recording.

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Sadhu, Male. 2005. Bhajans of Male Sadhu. CD. South Pacific Recordings Ltd. SPRCD73-364H-374H.

Sagar, Ramanand. 2003 [1987-1988]. Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan, vols. 1-16. DVD.Gayatri Films and Music Pvt. Ltd.

Singh, Shalendra Pratap. 2005. Islamic Latest Qawali. CD. Canadian Overseas TradingSouth Pacific Ltd. 35CR-HCD-SPS-05.

Soni, George. 2005. Lelo. CD. South Pacific Recordings Ltd. SPR CD57.

Subhaydas, Jimmy. 1981 Hindi Film Hits. Audiocassette. Procera Music PFC 84.

Yadav, Dinesh Lal, and Khushu Raj. 2006. Nirhua Satal Rahe. VCD, 61:01 min. T-Series CDVNF 2769.

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