BOOK LAUNCH
Coastlines: Writings of South Africans of Indian Origins
By Sayuri Persotham
South Africa is a diverse medley of black, white, coloured, and Indian. On paper and in the spirit of equality — we embrace all. Why is it, then, that Indians are described not by the colour of their skin but by the country of their origin? The answer is resoundingly simple: Our stories are still waiting to be told.
It is with quiet pride that I attended Dr Amitabh Mitra’s book launch at the Amazwi Museum of Literature on Thursday 11 July when he and Harry Owen, the poet-writer and esteemed guest of the evening, introduced Coastlines: Writings of South Africans of Indian Origins.
This collection of poetry and prose focuses on the struggles of indenture, detailing stories of descent — stories which belong to the vast majority of present-day South African Indians.
Photo credit: Sayuri Persotham
Abused at every turn
Mitra began his speech with the Oxford definition of indenture: “A deed between two or more parties with mutual covenants.” Owen, who is English-born, highlights the implicit minimising of this colonial definition. It erases cross-cultural power dynamics of the past, leaving a gaping hole in the history books. Indenture falls within the colonial tree, resembling a similarly oppressive sister to South Africa’s Apartheid regime. During the indenture system of the late 1800s, British officials transported over 150 000 Indians to the Colony of Natal under the guise of a new life. The reality? Glorified slave-labour in which once-hopeful Indian migrants were overworked, underpaid and, at every turn, abused.
Mitra reflected on his encounters with South African Indians: “From diplomats to professors, I came to realise that these people don’t fully understand their origins”. The seed of the book had been sown. In order to understand the complexity of migrant identity, we must first understand how we came to be. Coastlines seeks not only to give a voice to descendants of indenture but to inform younger generations of their ancestral roots.
Poetic justice
Tackling issues of marginalisation, hope and the Ubuntu ethos, the book seeks to “reawaken the thoughts and beliefs of the South African Indian community, and to bring them to the contemporary fold of politics”. Authors like Amitabh Mitra have broader impacts on international conceptions of Indian-African identity, particularly in India, where the journeys of indentured migrants remain lost.
He speaks openly of the excessive resistance he faced in sharing these stories. He declared fervently: “We are not pleasing the South African Government. Why? Because they are not Girmitiyas. We are the Girmitiyas.” This term refers to indentured laborers, ironically originating from the mispronunciation of the English word ‘agreement’. There’s a certain poetic justice in how a simple error evolves into a symbol of resistance. And yet, so much is left unknown. Coastlines marks merely the beginning of the long quest ahead to unravel indenture.
excerpt from Coastlines by Amitabh Mitra:
7
yes, it seems just like yesterday
there were many tomorrows
after that
and many tomorrows
really never lived
a man who survived
asked
about the sea
and the stillness
of a zealot sky
voices had been crushed
long before that
an aging earth
in an unforgiving
corner
never breathed
that day.
