Indenture in Language: The Words the Workers Made

Abstract

This paper affords an overview of the linguistic resources that indentured labourers (1860–1911) brought with them from different parts of India, as well as of the linguistic adaptations evident in the South African forms of Tamil, Bhojpuri-Hindi, Urdu and Telugu. These changes pertain to the coalescence of different but closely related Indian dialects to form distinct plantation varieties of each of these, as well as to the adoption of words from each other and other languages of South Africa (Afrikaans, English, Zulu). Although Indian languages are no longer widely spoken, it is argued that documentation of their resources and the resourcefulness of their speakers is an important sociolinguistic and historical activity. Furthermore, some of the words have consciously and sometimes unwittingly passed into the colloquial English of Indian communities in KwaZulu-Natal.

Keywords:

• Indian indenture
• language
• migration
• South Africa

Notes

1 For the most detailed and accessible of book length treatments see A. Desai and G. Vahed, Inside Indenture: A South African Story, 1860–1914 (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2010).

2 R. Mesthrie, Language in Indenture: A Sociolinguistic History of Bhojpuri-Hindi in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1991).

3 S. Bhana and J. Brain, Setting Down Roots (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1990); S. Bhana, Indentured Indian Immigrants to Natal (New Delhi: Promila, 1990).

4 W. Freund, Insiders and Outsiders: The Indian Working Class of Durban, 1910–1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1995); G. Vahed, A. Desai and T. Waetjen, Many Lives: 150 Years of Being Indian in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Shuter, 2010), xxiii.

5 R. Mesthrie, Language in Indenture; Mesthrie, R. and B. Pillay, ‘Aspects of South African Tamil: History, Structure, Change, Obsolescence’ (Report submitted to the Human Sciences Research Council, 1992). I use the term Bhojpuri-Hindi for the colloquial variety usually called ‘Hindi’ in KZN, but which has a closer relation to Bhojpuri and closely related varieties of the old Bengal presidency or Bihar – Uttar Pradesh – Jharkhand – Uttarkhand areas of present-day India.

6 See V.C. Malherbe ‘Indentured and Unfree Labour in South Africa: Towards an Understanding’, South African Historical Journal, 24 (1991): 3–30.

7 See entry in Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933) or online <oed.com>.

8 The sources for all words and etymologies are R. Mesthrie, ‘New Lights from Old Languages: Indian Languages and the Experience of Indentureship in South Africa’, in S. Bhana (ed.), Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1988), 189–208; Mesthrie, Language in Indenture; R. Mesthrie, ‘A Bird’s Eye View of South African Tamil’, Language Matters, 38 (2007):179–84; R. Mesthrie, A Dictionary of South African Indian English (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2010).

9 The following linguistic spelling conventions are necessary: a dot below a letter denotes a retroflex consonant; a bar above a vowel denotes a long vowel; a tilde ∼ above a vowel denotes a nasal pronunciation; ś may be thought of as a technical equivalent of ‘sh’.

10 See Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, 223–9.

11 J. Naidoo, Coolie Location (London: SA Writers, 1990).

12 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927), 100.

13 Z. Mayat, ‘Behind Shop Counters’, in R. Chetty (ed.), South African Indian Writings in English (Durban: Madiba, 2002), 188.

14 P. Roberge, ‘Afrikaans: Considering Origins’, in R. Mesthrie (ed.), Language in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 79–103.

15 H. Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 122. See also Desai and Vahed, Inside Indenture, 51.

16 M. Swan, Gandhi: The South African Experience (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1985), 284; S. Bhana, Indentured Indian Immigrants.

17 B. Govinden, ‘The Position and Role of Women in Indenture’, paper presented at the ‘From Indenture to Mandela to Freedom’ conference (Sastri College, Durban, 17 November 2018).

18 M. Chaturvedi and B.N. Tiwari, A Practical Hindi–English Dictionary (New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1978); R.S. McGregor, Oxford Hindi–English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

19 See P. Silva (ed.), A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

20 A. Hocking, Renishaw (Bethulie: Hollards, 1992), 145.

21 P. Baker and V. Hookoomsing, Dictionary of Mauritian Creole (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987).

22 Baker and Hookoomsing, Dictionary of Mauritian Creole.

23 C.M. Doke and B.W. Vilakazi, Zulu–English Dictionary (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1972).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rajend Mesthrie

RAJEND MESTHRIE is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at UCT and Research Chair in Migration, Language and Social Change.