INDIAN WOMEN IN FIJI.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 October 1918, Page 6

INDIAN WOMEN IN FIJI.

(By Professor Andrews.) Ladies,—ln Western ’Australia I met all'the leading Women’s Unions, and they gave me their fullest support and cordial sympathy on this matter which is so dear to my heart. I want now to explain it to you, and I am quite sure I will then have your sympathy also. Then I am going to Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, to speak to the women there, and, when that is done, it will give the greatest possible help towards a union between India and Australia. First, I have to put right a wrong to womanhood which will make all your feelings outraged when I tell you what is happening every day In Fiji; but, after that, when I can tell the women of India that their sisters in Australia are willing and eager to help them, it will strengthen the hone between the two countries; for the women are the' real rulers in India, they have immense influence over their sons, and the men will all follow ■■where the women are determined to lead them. I want now to get at once to the kind of evil which I want you to help to remedy. In Fiji thre'are only 20,000 women among the 60,000 Indians who have been brought out from India for the 'Colonial Suger Refining Co. of Sydney, and other companies under indentures. A great part of the sugar you, in Australia, eat, has been cultivates by these women. Australian capital floated this company, and Australians reap the profits, and the Commonwealth Government, ha? taken a contract for the whole of the sugar grown by the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. during the war. ' The first great wrong has been that these women have been brought over in the proportion of forty women to one hundred men, and also these poor women in India were often inveigled into going out against their own will. Quite 80 per cent of them are cheated and defrauded by the recruiting agents, who are paid so much per head=— jnQr? being given for women. For 'every woman they catch they get" £5, and only £4 for a man. This has now . been going on for forty years. These simple, patient women often do not knou r where they are going until they are at sea. They are told they will be going a few miles away and not till they are on board and have started do they fully understand that they are to be' taken to Fiji. I have rescued some of these my- J self, and I cannot tell you how wicked ‘ it all is.

Second. When they get out to Fiji in this wrong proportion of roughly three men to one woman, (all of marriageable age) they are crowded into quarters you would hardly think of putting your animals into. They are like boxes in a stable, the partitions of which often do not reach up to the roof. Sometimes a married couple, and perhaps 4 or 5 children,' will all be crowded into one little box and have to live and grow up under such conditions. You can hear everything which goes on in the other boxes, the boards are loosely put together, and there are cracks between through which one can see

iitfo the next box and a man-can easily -look over 1 the top on to the occupants below, y.here is absolutely no privacy or decency for often 3 unmarried men will placed next 'door' to a family and so on, It a “allied man goes out to Fiji with, 1 wife when he gets there h® is at QRQ® | he must allow his wife to, be used | w men—that is soon made sleat j to him. Then the children are J ibom *^- r6 are left alone ■ hll the day while their mothers are in the fields so that they grow up quite yild and ignorant of all that is good, knowing all that is possible of vice and degradation. For they see rthose quarters things that no chilu ought to sco —little children of 5 or C years are doing things that arc horrible to think of, for they have learned all the vices of the coolie lives. I could give yon details that would haunt your lives as they do mine. How can you expect anything else as long as you go on sending out those shiploads, biii. *1 hnl glad to say wo have stopped some . that, lii future, no more indentured labourers of any kind are to bo sent out from India to Fiji. "When X wem ■back to India the first time and told them- there how their sisters were being treated, the Indian women rose up all over the country. Women who have been in Purdah their whole life came right out on to the public platform and spoke out that their men must stop this. I have ""known noble ladies, who have thrown away all their wealth and apparel and appeared in public in the • poorest of clothes in order to show their sympathy with their sisters in Fiji,who have been treated in this terrible manner. When the women of India rose up against it, then in a fortnight the, whole attitude of the ■Government of India was changed and the Viceroy promised that no more labour of that kind shall go; but, these 60,000 are still living in their misery at your very doors, only days sail from Australia and children now being born must not bo

.left to sink further into the mire. I have been for months and months asking the Colonial Sugar Refining Go.j to grant mo a few simple things, which are quite inexpensive, -and hardly a single thang has been granted, while their profits amount to something between £300,000 and £500,000 per annum. They are simply enormous. Year after year it is getting fabulous fits and yet it refuses to do these simple acts of justice, and if the women of Australia would insist, then I think the Company will climb down. They have simply refused now to yield anything. They asked “Who are you?*’ I said, “I am nobody, but I am speaking in the 1 name of humanity. 11 I am not asking big things immediately but there are three things which must be done without a moment’s delay.

(To be Continued.)