Women and migration in South Africa: historical and literary perspectives

Abstract

When Indians migrated from India to Natal in the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as both indentured and free Indians, women were an important component of the newcomers. The lives of indentured women have only recently begun to gain critical attention in South African historiography. The narratives of free or ‘passenger’ Indian women have largely been narrated from the vantage point of ‘passenger’ males in the context of their arrival and settlement in Natal. The inclusion of their narratives into the history of Indian South Africans will stimulate a rethinking of the gendered experiences of Indian immigrants in the context of concomitant differences among ethnic groups, social mobility and the processes of acculturation and integration. Moreover, it will bring to the fore a category of immigrant women whose histories have yet to be fully explored and documented

Keywords:

• Indian diaspora
• gender
• passenger women
• indentured women
• Natal
• court immigration records

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Notes on contributors

Kalpana Hiralal is an associate professor of History at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. She teaches both undergraduate- and graduate-level modules on global history, women, gender and politics and culture and tourism. Her PhD dissertation focused on the South Asian Diaspora to Africa in the context of settlement, trade and identity formation. Her current research focus is on African and South Asian Diaspora, Gender and Empowerment and women struggles in Apartheid South Africa. She has published in several local and international academic journals in the context of gender, identity and agency.

Notes

1. Many villages in India had a representative body called the Panchayat, which was local self-government at the basic level. Source: Interview, Keshav Makan (2011).

2. The war years between 1914 and 1918 led to a temporary decline in women migrants to Natal.

3. The Union of South Africa came into being on 31 May 1910 with the unification of four previously separate British colonies: the Cape, Natal, Transvaal and Orange River Colony.