Indians in Fiji - Life During The Indenture Period

Life During The Indenture Period

The contracts of the indentured labourers, which they called girmit (agreements), required them to work in Fiji for a period of five years. Living conditions on the sugar cane plantations, on which most of the girmityas (indentured labourers) worked, were often squalid, degrading and brutal. Hovels known as "coolie lines" dotted the landscape. Women were often molested in the cane fields by both European overseers and Girmitya men who often managed the plantations. Illegitimate births were often high and suicide mostly among the women.

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