The Mynah Controversy: Girmit Memory, Racist Symbolism, and the Burden of Colonial MetaphorsThe criticism by Dialogue Fiji executive director Nilesh Lal over the use of a mynah bird image on a shirt produced for Girmit Day celebrations in Fiji has reopened difficult questions about race, memory, and the language through which Indo-Fijians have historically been portrayed. Nilesh Lal describes the imagery as “highly inappropriate, deeply offensive, and historically tone-deaf,” arguing that Girmit Day exists to honour the suffering, endurance, and contribution of the girmitiyas rather than revive symbols associated with their dehumanisation. His criticism is not directed merely at a bird printed on a commemorative shirt. It goes to the deeper historical meanings that the mynah bird has acquired within Fiji’s racial and literary discourse. The Common Mynah itself arrived in Fiji during the colonial era. British authorities had introduced the bird into Fiji and other sugar-producing colonies across the British Empire, including Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica, and Natal in South Africa. |  Nilesh Lal says the mynah bird carries a “direct legacy of dehumanization,” pointing to author James A. Michener’s Return to Paradise, where the bird was used as a literary device to portray Indo-Fijians as an “invasive pest."  Minister Charan Jeath Singh |
The bird had originally come from the Indian subcontinent. Colonial agricultural officials believed the mynah would function as a natural form of pest control within cane fields. Like many colonial environmental experiments, however, the consequences proved far more complex than expected.
The mynah multiplied rapidly. It spread across towns, villages, plantations, and urban centres. Over time, it became widely viewed as noisy, aggressive, territorial, and invasive. In Fiji, as elsewhere, the bird increasingly acquired a negative reputation because of its impact on native bird populations and its ability to dominate human settlements.
It is precisely that reputation which later entered racial discourse.
Nilesh Lal specifically refers to Return to Paradise by James A. Michener, where the mynah bird emerged as a literary metaphor associated with Indo-Fijians. Michener’s Pacific writings reflected many of the assumptions and anxieties of the colonial world in which he wrote. Within that framework, the mynah increasingly became symbolic of the Indo-Fijian presence itself.
The comparison was deeply troubling.
Throughout colonial history, racial minorities and migrant communities were often described through the language of pests, weeds, vermin, or invasive species. Such metaphors were never innocent literary devices. They functioned politically by reducing human beings into biological nuisances whose presence could be viewed as unnatural or threatening.
In Fiji, Indo-Fijians have long endured accusations from ethno-nationalist elements that they were “imported people” with no organic claim to the country. The mynah metaphor therefore carried a particularly cruel resonance because it echoed precisely that narrative of foreign intrusion.
Yet the historical reality was entirely different.
The girmitiyas did not arrive in Fiji as conquerors or colonisers. They came as indentured labourers transported under the authority of empire to sustain the plantation economy built around sugar. Many left poverty, famine, caste oppression, or economic desperation in India. Many died during the voyages across the kala pani. Many endured harsh conditions on the plantations. Most never returned to India.
Over generations, Indo-Fijians transformed themselves from plantation labourers into citizens who helped shape modern Fiji through commerce, education, journalism, law, medicine, trade unionism, politics, and public service.
That was why Nilesh Lal argued that associating Girmit remembrance with a symbol historically linked to notions of invasiveness or nuisance risked undermining the dignity of the very people Girmit Day seeks to honour.
At the same time, the controversy also revealed the complexity of symbols within Indo-Fijian cultural memory itself.
For many Indo-Fijians, the mynah bird has never been viewed negatively. The “maina” bird existed throughout India long before indenture, and generations of Indo-Fijians grew up regarding it as familiar, intelligent, talkative, and resilient. In homes and villages, it often became part of childhood memory and everyday life. Some who saw the shirt may therefore have interpreted the image simply as a harmless cultural reference disconnected from its darker racial associations.
But public symbols rarely remain innocent once history attaches meaning to them.
The issue raised by Nilesh Lal is therefore not simply about design aesthetics or political correctness. It concerns historical consciousness itself. Girmit Day is not merely a festival. It is also a memorial to one of the largest forced labour migrations in the history of the British Empire.
The language and imagery surrounding that remembrance matter.
The girmitiyas were human beings who crossed oceans under immense suffering and uncertainty. They were not pests, invasive species, or colonial curiosities. They became part of the moral, economic, intellectual, and political foundation of modern Fiji.
That is why the controversy surrounding the mynah bird image continues to resonate so strongly in Fiji today.
It touches the oldest wound in Indo-Fijian history: the struggle not merely to survive in Fiji, but to belong.
The Indian indentured labourers were uprooted to prevent the disintegration of the iTaukei way of life. While the indentured labourers toiled on the sugar, tea, and cotton plantations, the iTaukei and their chiefs were allowed to "grog" under the mango tree.
The mynah multiplied rapidly. It spread across towns, villages, plantations, and urban centres. Over time, it became widely viewed as noisy, aggressive, territorial, and invasive. In Fiji, as elsewhere, the bird increasingly acquired a negative reputation because of its impact on native bird populations and its ability to dominate human settlements.
It is precisely that reputation which later entered racial discourse.
Nilesh Lal specifically refers to Return to Paradise by James A. Michener, where the mynah bird emerged as a literary metaphor associated with Indo-Fijians. Michener’s Pacific writings reflected many of the assumptions and anxieties of the colonial world in which he wrote. Within that framework, the mynah increasingly became symbolic of the Indo-Fijian presence itself.
The comparison was deeply troubling.
Throughout colonial history, racial minorities and migrant communities were often described through the language of pests, weeds, vermin, or invasive species. Such metaphors were never innocent literary devices. They functioned politically by reducing human beings into biological nuisances whose presence could be viewed as unnatural or threatening.
In Fiji, Indo-Fijians have long endured accusations from ethno-nationalist elements that they were “imported people” with no organic claim to the country. The mynah metaphor therefore carried a particularly cruel resonance because it echoed precisely that narrative of foreign intrusion.
Yet the historical reality was entirely different.
The girmitiyas did not arrive in Fiji as conquerors or colonisers. They came as indentured labourers transported under the authority of empire to sustain the plantation economy built around sugar. Many left poverty, famine, caste oppression, or economic desperation in India. Many died during the voyages across the kala pani. Many endured harsh conditions on the plantations. Most never returned to India.
Over generations, Indo-Fijians transformed themselves from plantation labourers into citizens who helped shape modern Fiji through commerce, education, journalism, law, medicine, trade unionism, politics, and public service.
That was why Nilesh Lal argued that associating Girmit remembrance with a symbol historically linked to notions of invasiveness or nuisance risked undermining the dignity of the very people Girmit Day seeks to honour.
At the same time, the controversy also revealed the complexity of symbols within Indo-Fijian cultural memory itself.
For many Indo-Fijians, the mynah bird has never been viewed negatively. The “maina” bird existed throughout India long before indenture, and generations of Indo-Fijians grew up regarding it as familiar, intelligent, talkative, and resilient. In homes and villages, it often became part of childhood memory and everyday life. Some who saw the shirt may therefore have interpreted the image simply as a harmless cultural reference disconnected from its darker racial associations.
But public symbols rarely remain innocent once history attaches meaning to them.
The issue raised by Nilesh Lal is therefore not simply about design aesthetics or political correctness. It concerns historical consciousness itself. Girmit Day is not merely a festival. It is also a memorial to one of the largest forced labour migrations in the history of the British Empire.
The language and imagery surrounding that remembrance matter.
The girmitiyas were human beings who crossed oceans under immense suffering and uncertainty. They were not pests, invasive species, or colonial curiosities. They became part of the moral, economic, intellectual, and political foundation of modern Fiji.
That is why the controversy surrounding the mynah bird image continues to resonate so strongly in Fiji today.
It touches the oldest wound in Indo-Fijian history: the struggle not merely to survive in Fiji, but to belong.
The Indian indentured labourers were uprooted to prevent the disintegration of the iTaukei way of life. While the indentured labourers toiled on the sugar, tea, and cotton plantations, the iTaukei and their chiefs were allowed to "grog" under the mango tree.
Song of the Mynah and the Girmitiya
The mynah came before dawn,
black-winged, sharp-eyed, restless,
crossing oceans in the belly of empire
as the girmitiya crossed in chains of paper,
his thumbprint sealing a fate
he could neither read nor refuse.
Both arrived where cane rose taller than memory.
The bird perched upon the roofs
of the coolie lines,
chirping above muddy drains,
watching women in torn saris
wash hunger from brass plates
while children chased dust
and dragonflies
between rows of cane.
The girmitiya heard the bird
before the overseer’s whistle.
Before the crack of the whip.
Before the burning sun
climbed over Lautoka
and the fields swallowed
another day.
The mynah did not know caste.
It did not know kala pani.
It did not know the smell of a ship
where bodies lay fevered
beside saltwater prayers.
But it knew survival.
It learnt the language of plantations,
of smoke rising from CSR mills,
of sweat dripping into cane roots,
of men who cut sugar for an empire
that would never know their names.
At night the bird returned,
settling in mango trees
above the barracks
while the girmitiyas whispered
of Hindustan.
Of mothers left waiting beside
village wells.
Of wives who never
received letters.
Of fathers who died believing
their sons had vanished into
the sea.
The mynah listened.
Years passed.
The cane grew.
Children became teachers,
lawyers, drivers, shopkeepers.
The coolie line became settlement,
the settlement became town,
and the girmitiya
slowly became citizen.
But Fiji never fully stopped counting origins.
They called the bird invasive.
Noisy. Foreign.
A pest carried by empire.
Sometimes they called the Indian the same.
The words changed shape
through politics,
through coups and constitutions,
through speeches about
ownership and belonging,
but beneath them lingered
the old accusation:
You came from elsewhere.
Yet the mynah did not steal
the islands.
Nor did the girmitiya.
One survived by instinct.
The other by endurance.
Today the bird still chirps
across Fiji
from Suva roofs to Labasa
cane fields,
from Ba markets to Nadi
bus stands.
Its voice rises each morning
beside temple bells and church hymns,
beside the call to prayer and
the roar of buses,
woven now into the soundscape
of the nation itself.
And somewhere beneath that
restless
chirping
lies the unfinished story of Girmit:
how empire carried birds and
labourers together,
how one became nuisance,
the other became nation,
and how both remained
forever tied
to the sugarfields of Fiji.
The mynah came before dawn,
black-winged, sharp-eyed, restless,
crossing oceans in the belly of empire
as the girmitiya crossed in chains of paper,
his thumbprint sealing a fate
he could neither read nor refuse.
Both arrived where cane rose taller than memory.
The bird perched upon the roofs
of the coolie lines,
chirping above muddy drains,
watching women in torn saris
wash hunger from brass plates
while children chased dust
and dragonflies
between rows of cane.
The girmitiya heard the bird
before the overseer’s whistle.
Before the crack of the whip.
Before the burning sun
climbed over Lautoka
and the fields swallowed
another day.
The mynah did not know caste.
It did not know kala pani.
It did not know the smell of a ship
where bodies lay fevered
beside saltwater prayers.
But it knew survival.
It learnt the language of plantations,
of smoke rising from CSR mills,
of sweat dripping into cane roots,
of men who cut sugar for an empire
that would never know their names.
At night the bird returned,
settling in mango trees
above the barracks
while the girmitiyas whispered
of Hindustan.
Of mothers left waiting beside
village wells.
Of wives who never
received letters.
Of fathers who died believing
their sons had vanished into
the sea.
The mynah listened.
Years passed.
The cane grew.
Children became teachers,
lawyers, drivers, shopkeepers.
The coolie line became settlement,
the settlement became town,
and the girmitiya
slowly became citizen.
But Fiji never fully stopped counting origins.
They called the bird invasive.
Noisy. Foreign.
A pest carried by empire.
Sometimes they called the Indian the same.
The words changed shape
through politics,
through coups and constitutions,
through speeches about
ownership and belonging,
but beneath them lingered
the old accusation:
You came from elsewhere.
Yet the mynah did not steal
the islands.
Nor did the girmitiya.
One survived by instinct.
The other by endurance.
Today the bird still chirps
across Fiji
from Suva roofs to Labasa
cane fields,
from Ba markets to Nadi
bus stands.
Its voice rises each morning
beside temple bells and church hymns,
beside the call to prayer and
the roar of buses,
woven now into the soundscape
of the nation itself.
And somewhere beneath that
restless
chirping
lies the unfinished story of Girmit:
how empire carried birds and
labourers together,
how one became nuisance,
the other became nation,
and how both remained
forever tied
to the sugarfields of Fiji.
From 1987 Coups to 1990 Constitution of Fiji:
“How Many Generations Must One Wait to Become a Native?”
The 1990 Constitution brought me into direct conflict with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, and Sitiveni Rabuka when the late Professor Asesela Ravuvu and I exchanged sharp words at a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office seminar in London on constitutional developments in Fiji following the 1987 coups.
Also seated across the table was the late Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, then Rabuka’s High Commissioner to London and later President of Fiji under the post-Ghai Constitution.
It was at that seminar that I repeated what I had earlier told a BBC television audience: “The 1987 coups raise one, and only one, question: how many generations must one wait to become a native? My ancestors were coolie Indians, not me or my fellow Indo-Fijians.”
The remark went to the heart of the constitutional crisis that followed the 1987 coups. The issue was not merely political power. It was the deeper and more troubling question of belonging, citizenship, and identity in Fiji.
For many Indo-Fijians born in Fiji, whose families had lived, worked, suffered, and died in the country for generations, the coups signalled that they remained perpetual outsiders in the land of their birth.
The 1990 Constitution institutionalised that exclusion by entrenching ethnic supremacy in the political structure of the State. It transformed race into a constitutional principle and reduced equal citizenship to a secondary consideration.
That debate in London was therefore not an academic exchange. It was a confrontation over the future soul of Fiji.
Sadly, Ravuvu barely exchanged a word with me, for I had the temerity to tell him: "You are a half-caste i-Taukei and Fijian Chinese, just like my nephews and nieces, except that they are half Indo-Fijians and Fijian Chinese. So, please, just SHUT UP."
I repeated it in my maternal Tailevu i-taukei dialect to drive home the message to him.
“How Many Generations Must One Wait to Become a Native?”
The 1990 Constitution brought me into direct conflict with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, and Sitiveni Rabuka when the late Professor Asesela Ravuvu and I exchanged sharp words at a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office seminar in London on constitutional developments in Fiji following the 1987 coups.
Also seated across the table was the late Ratu Epeli Nailatikau, then Rabuka’s High Commissioner to London and later President of Fiji under the post-Ghai Constitution.
It was at that seminar that I repeated what I had earlier told a BBC television audience: “The 1987 coups raise one, and only one, question: how many generations must one wait to become a native? My ancestors were coolie Indians, not me or my fellow Indo-Fijians.”
The remark went to the heart of the constitutional crisis that followed the 1987 coups. The issue was not merely political power. It was the deeper and more troubling question of belonging, citizenship, and identity in Fiji.
For many Indo-Fijians born in Fiji, whose families had lived, worked, suffered, and died in the country for generations, the coups signalled that they remained perpetual outsiders in the land of their birth.
The 1990 Constitution institutionalised that exclusion by entrenching ethnic supremacy in the political structure of the State. It transformed race into a constitutional principle and reduced equal citizenship to a secondary consideration.
That debate in London was therefore not an academic exchange. It was a confrontation over the future soul of Fiji.
Sadly, Ravuvu barely exchanged a word with me, for I had the temerity to tell him: "You are a half-caste i-Taukei and Fijian Chinese, just like my nephews and nieces, except that they are half Indo-Fijians and Fijian Chinese. So, please, just SHUT UP."
I repeated it in my maternal Tailevu i-taukei dialect to drive home the message to him.
From Fiji to the Caribbean and Mauritius: The Mynah Bird, Indians, and the Politics of Colonial Memory
The politics surrounding the Common Mynah in Fiji are not entirely unique. Across several former sugar colonies of the British and Dutch empires, particularly Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and Mauritius, the bird also arrived alongside Indian indentured labour and became entangled, to varying degrees, with colonial memory, race, and identity.
Yet the political meanings attached to the mynah evolved differently across the sugar colonies.
In Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, and Mauritius, the mynah was introduced during the plantation era for much the same reason as in Fiji: colonial authorities believed the bird would help control insects and agricultural pests affecting sugar cane production. Like Indian indentured labourers themselves, the bird travelled through imperial shipping routes linking India to the plantation economies of the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific.
The bird adapted quickly to tropical colonial environments and became a familiar presence across cane districts, villages, ports, and towns populated heavily by descendants of Indian labourers.
But unlike Fiji, where Indo-Fijians became a demographic minority confronting repeated ethno-nationalist challenges to their belonging, Indo-descended communities in Mauritius, Trinidad, and Guyana eventually emerged as dominant or near-dominant demographic and political forces.
That historical difference mattered enormously.
In Mauritius especially, Indo-Mauritians eventually became the numerical majority and the central political force within the postcolonial state. Indian languages, Hindu festivals, and Indo-Mauritian political leadership became deeply embedded within national identity itself. As a result, the mynah bird never acquired the same sharp political symbolism as an “alien” Indian presence.
In Mauritius, the bird is generally viewed simply as part of the island’s ordinary environment. It appears in gardens, towns, cane districts, and villages much as it does in Fiji. Mauritian folklore and everyday conversation sometimes portray the bird as noisy, adaptable, intelligent, or mischievous, but not as a racial metaphor directed at Indo-Mauritians.
The same broad pattern existed in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
In Trinidad, the mynah is often treated more as a noisy urban nuisance than a political symbol. Trinidadian humour and popular culture may describe the bird as talkative, opportunistic, or irritating, but it rarely functions as a sustained metaphor for Indo-Trinidadians themselves. Political tensions in Trinidad historically revolved more directly around Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian competition over elections, state resources, religion, and cultural dominance rather than ecological imagery.
Similarly, in Guyana, political conflict historically centred on labour struggles, class divisions, Cold War rivalries, and Afro-Guyanese versus Indo-Guyanese competition for state power. The mynah never became central to those ideological battles. Indo-Guyanese identity instead became associated more strongly with rice farming, sugar estates, Hinduism, Islam, and village life.
In Suriname, descendants of Indian indentured labourers, known as Hindustanis, similarly did not experience the mynah as a politically charged racial symbol. Dutch colonialism produced a somewhat different racial and linguistic structure from the British colonies, and the bird largely remained part of the ordinary tropical environment rather than national political rhetoric.
That did not mean colonial prejudices were absent.
Across the plantation colonies, Indians were often stereotyped by colonial writers and sections of European society as commercially aggressive, clannish, excessively reproductive, or culturally foreign. Such stereotypes echoed anxieties that also appeared in Fiji’s racial politics. Literary comparisons between migrant populations and introduced species occasionally surfaced throughout the colonial world.
But Fiji remained distinct because of the fusion between race, land ownership, indigeneity, and constitutional power.
In Fiji, Indo-Fijians remained permanently vulnerable to arguments that they were descendants of temporary labourers who never fully belonged within an i-taukei political order. The coups of 1987, the racial provisions of the 1990 Constitution, and decades of ethno-nationalist rhetoric deepened that sense of contested belonging.
Within that environment, metaphors involving imported species such as the mynah bird acquired sharper and more dangerous political meanings.
By contrast, in Mauritius, Indo-Mauritians became the political mainstream itself. In Trinidad and Guyana, Indo-descended populations eventually produced Prime Ministers, Presidents, dominant political parties, and major state institutions. The political struggle in those societies centred less on whether Indians belonged and more on how power should be shared between competing ethnic blocs.
There is also another important distinction.
In Mauritius and much of the Caribbean, the mynah became absorbed into creole everyday culture without carrying heavy ideological baggage. People complained about the bird’s noise, droppings, or nuisance behaviour much as they might complain about pigeons elsewhere. It rarely carried the emotionally charged burden now associated with the symbol in Fiji’s Girmit debate.
Yet beneath those differences lay a common imperial history.
The mynah travelled through the same colonial networks that carried indentured Indians from Calcutta and Madras to the cane colonies after the abolition of slavery. Both the labourers and the birds formed part of the same plantation experiment conducted by empire across the tropical world.
The bird therefore remains, whether in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, or Suriname, one of the quieter living relics of the indenture age.
Its chirping across cane districts from Lautoka to Port Louis in Mauritius, from Labasa to Georgetown in Guyana, and from Ba to Port of Spain in Trinidad still echoes the older movements of empire itself: ships carrying labour, capital, crops, birds, and entire displaced worlds across the oceans.
Yet the political meanings attached to the mynah evolved differently across the sugar colonies.
In Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, and Mauritius, the mynah was introduced during the plantation era for much the same reason as in Fiji: colonial authorities believed the bird would help control insects and agricultural pests affecting sugar cane production. Like Indian indentured labourers themselves, the bird travelled through imperial shipping routes linking India to the plantation economies of the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific.
The bird adapted quickly to tropical colonial environments and became a familiar presence across cane districts, villages, ports, and towns populated heavily by descendants of Indian labourers.
But unlike Fiji, where Indo-Fijians became a demographic minority confronting repeated ethno-nationalist challenges to their belonging, Indo-descended communities in Mauritius, Trinidad, and Guyana eventually emerged as dominant or near-dominant demographic and political forces.
That historical difference mattered enormously.
In Mauritius especially, Indo-Mauritians eventually became the numerical majority and the central political force within the postcolonial state. Indian languages, Hindu festivals, and Indo-Mauritian political leadership became deeply embedded within national identity itself. As a result, the mynah bird never acquired the same sharp political symbolism as an “alien” Indian presence.
In Mauritius, the bird is generally viewed simply as part of the island’s ordinary environment. It appears in gardens, towns, cane districts, and villages much as it does in Fiji. Mauritian folklore and everyday conversation sometimes portray the bird as noisy, adaptable, intelligent, or mischievous, but not as a racial metaphor directed at Indo-Mauritians.
The same broad pattern existed in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.
In Trinidad, the mynah is often treated more as a noisy urban nuisance than a political symbol. Trinidadian humour and popular culture may describe the bird as talkative, opportunistic, or irritating, but it rarely functions as a sustained metaphor for Indo-Trinidadians themselves. Political tensions in Trinidad historically revolved more directly around Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian competition over elections, state resources, religion, and cultural dominance rather than ecological imagery.
Similarly, in Guyana, political conflict historically centred on labour struggles, class divisions, Cold War rivalries, and Afro-Guyanese versus Indo-Guyanese competition for state power. The mynah never became central to those ideological battles. Indo-Guyanese identity instead became associated more strongly with rice farming, sugar estates, Hinduism, Islam, and village life.
In Suriname, descendants of Indian indentured labourers, known as Hindustanis, similarly did not experience the mynah as a politically charged racial symbol. Dutch colonialism produced a somewhat different racial and linguistic structure from the British colonies, and the bird largely remained part of the ordinary tropical environment rather than national political rhetoric.
That did not mean colonial prejudices were absent.
Across the plantation colonies, Indians were often stereotyped by colonial writers and sections of European society as commercially aggressive, clannish, excessively reproductive, or culturally foreign. Such stereotypes echoed anxieties that also appeared in Fiji’s racial politics. Literary comparisons between migrant populations and introduced species occasionally surfaced throughout the colonial world.
But Fiji remained distinct because of the fusion between race, land ownership, indigeneity, and constitutional power.
In Fiji, Indo-Fijians remained permanently vulnerable to arguments that they were descendants of temporary labourers who never fully belonged within an i-taukei political order. The coups of 1987, the racial provisions of the 1990 Constitution, and decades of ethno-nationalist rhetoric deepened that sense of contested belonging.
Within that environment, metaphors involving imported species such as the mynah bird acquired sharper and more dangerous political meanings.
By contrast, in Mauritius, Indo-Mauritians became the political mainstream itself. In Trinidad and Guyana, Indo-descended populations eventually produced Prime Ministers, Presidents, dominant political parties, and major state institutions. The political struggle in those societies centred less on whether Indians belonged and more on how power should be shared between competing ethnic blocs.
There is also another important distinction.
In Mauritius and much of the Caribbean, the mynah became absorbed into creole everyday culture without carrying heavy ideological baggage. People complained about the bird’s noise, droppings, or nuisance behaviour much as they might complain about pigeons elsewhere. It rarely carried the emotionally charged burden now associated with the symbol in Fiji’s Girmit debate.
Yet beneath those differences lay a common imperial history.
The mynah travelled through the same colonial networks that carried indentured Indians from Calcutta and Madras to the cane colonies after the abolition of slavery. Both the labourers and the birds formed part of the same plantation experiment conducted by empire across the tropical world.
The bird therefore remains, whether in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, or Suriname, one of the quieter living relics of the indenture age.
Its chirping across cane districts from Lautoka to Port Louis in Mauritius, from Labasa to Georgetown in Guyana, and from Ba to Port of Spain in Trinidad still echoes the older movements of empire itself: ships carrying labour, capital, crops, birds, and entire displaced worlds across the oceans.
London, 1991: The late Dr Cheddi Jagan and Fijileaks Editor
Editor's Note: As a direct descendant of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, my writing and fight for democracy, was also deeply shaped by the friendship and guidance of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan of Guyana, likewise a descendant of indentured Indians. Jagan was overthrown in the 1953 insurrection while serving as Guyana’s first elected Prime Minister, but returned triumphantly to power in 1992. For both of us, our families’ roots in the sugarcane fields of Fiji and British Guiana were not just history but living memory, and they shaped our understanding of race, democracy, class, and political power in divided societies.
 | From Girmit to Grief in Fiji: Descendants of India’s Indentured Labourers Watch Their Homes Turn to Ashes |
