Fijileaks: We understand Professor SUDESH MISHRA was not invited as SPEAKER at the two day international girmit conference organised by the Global Girmit Institute, whose TRUSTEES are Biman Prasad's wife Rajni from the USP, and GANESH CHAND.
"Although never exposed to hard plantation labour in the manner of the Indians, 'The Kadavu Five' were co-sharers in and witnesses to an event in modernity known as girmit."
"Two major historical events, one concerning Indigenous Fijian immobility in 19th century and the other pertaining to indenture as a purely Indian occasion, no longer seem incontestable or self-evident. A crack appears in the neat history of the itaukei as grounded subjects of colonial paternalism while, at same time, it becomes impossible to commemorate the voyage of the Leonidas in exclusively Indian terms. The five itaukei men are figures of an exception. They exist inside/outside two major events, namely, late-19th-century Fijian history and the history of Indian indentured labour. The former is exemplified by the image of the government garden, Governor Gordon's gradualist philosophy and counter-migratory understandings of native character, while the latter is conceived in terms of ethnically defined migrations and insulated life-worlds in the interlocking spatial arenas of the coolie system. The men straddle both, but fit neither of these histories."
Professor Sudesh Mishra, USP, Fiji
 | Professor SUDESH MISHRA (left photo) |
*We suggest LYNDA TABUYA and LENORA QEREQERETABUA and their fellow Kadavu kinsfolk hold a church service in Suva on Sunday 14 May, and request that one be held in Kadavu on the same day, to remember the 'KADAVU FIVE', and demand an explanation from the conference organisers why the story of their fellow brave men onboard the Leonidas was not included in the two-day conference.
*Sudesh Mishra was definitely NOT on the list of SPEAKERS while a special session was devoted to honouring the writings of the late BRIJ LAL. The keynote conference speech was delivered by USP VC PAL AHLUWALIA followed by BIMAN PRASAD.
*We have decided to publish extracts from Mishra's fascinating research to balance the lop-sided and Girmitiya dominated presentations at the conference, organised by the GLOBAL GIRMIT INSTITUTE.
*It beggars belief that the organisers invited speakers from overseas and yet never tapped into speakers in their midst at the USP.
*The Kadavu Five' spent time in Calcutta and Trinidad depots.
Equally, we would like to point out that Yanuca Lailai was the first island to be transformed into a coolie depot for Leonidas passengers
 Yanuca Lailai  Kadavu (aerial photo) |  |
"My intention to write a paper on the five Indigenous Fijians who travelled with the first shipment of Indian workers to Fiji in 1879 was, in some quarters, treated with outright scepticism. The scepticism irked me at first, as I had irrefutable archival proof in my possession, but then I started to wonder at the assumption behind the disbelief. It struck me that the doubters were incapable of imagining their forefathers as mobile subjects of a past that cast them as characters in a history both fixed and monumentalised. In this history, all the uprooting and voyaging was done by sullen coolies, rascally colonials and gullible kanakas. Those famously sheltered subjects of an experimental colonial policy - the itaukei or Indigenous Fijians - did not have cause or means or the inclination to venture beyond the vanua (landed unit) and the dalo patch..."
SUDESH MISHRA
Below is abridged version from Mishra's article on 'Kadavu Five i-Taukei'
Fijileaks: We invite the Kai Kadavu folks to contact us (editor@fijileaks.com) for further information, and any oral traditions about the 'Five' if it still exists on Kadavu Island.
We didn't hear of them at the two-day international conference organised by the Global Girmit Institute, whose TRUSTEES include Biman Prasad's wife Rajni from USP, and his chamcha GANESH PRASAD.
As we have pointed out, 14 May is a BLACK DAY, for western i-Taukei whose son, the late Dr Timoci Bavadra, was deposed by SITIVENI RABUKA. 14 May is also a dark chapter in the history of the Indo-Fijians. It was the day their girmit ancestors became slaves on the Fiji plantations. There is nothing to celebrate but to mourn 14 May 1879 and 14 May 1987. Sitiveni Rabuka is still hiding behind IMMUNITY while his talatalas have embarked on 'reconciliation journey'.
