Across the Kala Pani

Across the Kala Pani PDF Author: Shevlyn Mottai
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1776380320
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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

Across the Kala Pani

Across the Kala Pani PDF Author: Shevlyn Mottai
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1776380320
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book

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

Across the Kalapani

Across the Kalapani PDF Author: Sunita Narayanh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789821012539
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Kala Pani Crossings

Kala Pani Crossings PDF Author: Ashutosh Bhardwaj
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100051319X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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

Kala Pani

Kala Pani PDF Author: Rehana Ebr.-Vally
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780795701351
Category : Apartheid
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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

Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora

Kala Pani Crossings, Gender and Diaspora PDF Author: Judith Misrahi-Barak
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100381610X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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

Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad 1917–1947

Gender Negotiations among Indians in Trinidad 1917–1947 PDF Author: P. Mohammed
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403914168
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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

Crossing the Kala Pani

Crossing the Kala Pani PDF Author: Brij V. Lal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description


The Island of Black Waters (Kala Pani)

The Island of Black Waters (Kala Pani) PDF Author: Hadrat Maulana Muhammad Thanseri Sahib
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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

Across the Kalapani

Across the Kalapani PDF Author: Centre for Research on Indian Ocean Societies (Mauritius)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bihari (South Asian people)
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This Book Is A Celebration Of The History And Presence Of Biharis In Mauritius. It Brings Together Prose, Poetry And Art To Recreate Scenes And Events Of Bihari History In Mauritius And To Evoke The Dramas Of Exile And Settlement.

Kala Pani

Kala Pani PDF Author: Monica Mody
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984029761
Category : Travelers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Kala Pani fits the loose editorial definition of a hybrid text: it combines the intense play of poetry, language as live field ... with structures of screenplay, newsfeed and public relations statement ... as well as narrative threads and characters who keep the same names throughout the book."--Review by Kate Schapira in Pank magazine, posted online March 6, 2014.