Satendra Nandan(1999) Satendra Nandan was born in Fiji and completed his doctorate at ANU.

He was a member of the Fiji Parliament from 1982 then moved to Canberra following the coups in the late 1980's. Nandan's publications include three volumes of poetry, one acclaimed novel, The Wounded Sea, and 3 co-edited collections of essays. The Asialink residency in 1999 - 2000 provided him with the opportunity to work on a range of India-related projects: a novel set in New Delhi, Canberra and Suva, a collection of semi-autobiographical pieces titled Indian Fragments, a book on the life and values of Mahatma Gandhi, and the Delhi section of his autobiography, Requiem for a Rainbow: An IndoFijian Journey. He also worked on a translation of Patrick White's Tree of Man into Hindi with academics at JNU, to be published in June 2001. Satendra Nandan's Literature residency was supported by Arts ACT and the Australia Council.

Fiji Times Online

Fiji Time: 9:19 PM on Wednesday 8 September

Passion for poetry

Satendra Nandan Thursday, March 25, 2010 The writer says it's clear to teach fictionand drama in schools than poetry This year I began a course in Poetry for my students majoring in English. Most don't remember a single poem. Some are teachers of English. It's been a daunting subject, they tell me, and poetry has gone out the windows of their classrooms. It's easier to teach fiction and drama; poetry is blank verse - sometimes even filling the blanks in exams. There's, of course, poetry all around us. Fiji has an aura of paradise in the world's imagination because of the poetic nature of the islands, the features of the faces we meet, the colours of the sky, the sounds of the surf breaking on the shores; and the wetness of falling rain on the mystic mountains, the magic of the moon seen through the trembling leaves of a raintree, the flamboyance of sunsets, the radiance of a sunrise, and, occasionally, the terror and pity of more than cyclones.

The challenge of a teacher is to open the imagination of the child to the wonders of the world around us: the natural world, the human world - all is charged with the grandeur of God; where generations have trod, have trod, And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell? There's poetry in the used utensils of our mothers, in the spades and knives of our fathers, in the woven baskets and mats in the market place. There's always poetry in the movements on the playing fields, in the gait and gaiety of companionships, in the greenness of grass. Poets make us see these things with freshness and new feelings of reverence for life lived. The very impurities of our existence - its stains and sprains - are the stuff of poems: we sense this in the folds of our hills, in the wrinkles of the sea-waves, in the cracks of our heart, in the silences of our conversation. Poetry makes us enter a different reality. But that reality is in our world of daily bread. We see the immediate with a singular beauty and hope; in acts of kindness and affections. The sweat and tears, smells and scents, plastic bags and flowers, the poetry of human body soiled sometimes by our shameful behaviour, often ennobled by the energy within us, is our deepest poetry. Its freshness never becomes spent or stale. And we often wonder why love was not given, the good not done, the faith not followed, the feelings not expressed. Yet there are moments of personal epiphanies. As a poet wrote sitting in a city's shop: My fiftieth year had come and gone I sat, a soliditary man, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless. These moments of illumination are part of our lives. And once you've known them, your temptations for corruption and criminality are lessened because you've been touched by a special emotion. It is this that makes our living bearable, to discover the extraordinary behind the ordinary, the mystery and the mantras that is found in every possible aspect of our lives.

But poetry's greatest gift is how it helps us to survive grief, big and small, in life and death. Who hasn't heard the crying in the wind, or seen a personal loss in the withering of a tree. Or confronted in an empty doorway, a fallen leaf which contains all the history of our grief. We know poetry is healing: our sweetest songs are those that tell us of our saddest thoughts. We realise though nothing will bring back 'the hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower' but we will grieve not; find strength in what remains behind, hearing often times, The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating... And feel A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things? What better lines to inspire our children and adults to love and protect our environment, to believe in a presence greater than ourselves. Poetry can also be nationalistic and patriotic: I have grown past hate and bitterness, I see the world as one; But though I can no longer hate, My son is still my son. All men at God's round table sit, And all men must be fed; But the loaf in my hand, This loaf is my son's bread. But Poetry really has no national frontiers - it crosses all borders and sometimes we murmur to ourselves, in our most intimate moments, my soul, like my twin in the sun, has no country. Poetry will

not make us just but it may make injustice visible, audible. All prophets and seers have this poetic quality in their utterances. They have vision; the poet gives us the better eyesight. And our deepest insight is that in all our distress, life remains a blessing, although often we may fail to bless. It is to this awareness that poetry gives permanence and significance. In our hymns and songs, bhajan and prayers, the poetry of lives and lines remains in the nightmares of the dust-laden streets and the dreams of city lights. It also reveals to us that a moth's desire for light is because it sees darkness in the heart of light; poetry often makes us see light in the heart of darkness. It is to this difference that every poet gives meaning for it is our expression of the dialogue with ourselves; our mobile connection with the moving spirit of the universe. Poetry takes us back into our lives and like the ocean it receives all with charity, like the earth renews all without malice. So teach and read, write and recite your poems and 'rage, rage against the dying of the light'. That may have been a poet's cry against Death; for us it could be our poem of Life.

Visions of a larger humanity

Saturday, May 19, 2007 The following remarks were made by high chief and former Vice-President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi at the launching of Doctor Satendra Nandan's book, The Loneliness of Islands at the University of Fiji on Tuesday. THIS anthology of verse is an eclectic offering. They are collected under a heading that mirrors the poet's own personal journey and pilgrimage. It weaves a rich and vibrant tapestry that threads together the pain of Girmitya, the strength of family, the despair of rootlessness, alienation of exile and the variegated mosaic of life beyond our shores as well as the pathos of the return home. They are at heart intensely private musings that are generously shared with the poet's audience for some understanding of his perspectives. The launching today is deliberate. It marks the one hundred and twenty-eighth anniversary of the arrival of the Girmityas. The names of the ships that brought them are etched on our collective consciousness: Leonidas, Syria, Danube, Poonah, Elbe and others. The poet calls them to mind in Lines Across Black Waters. It is their legacy of pain, suffering, stoicism, sacrifice and eventual resilience against what fate visited upon them that has moulded the outlook of this poet. He is profoundly affected by what they endured. So terrible and searing on their psyche, that they and their children rarely spoke of it.

Many seemingly ashamed of their helplessness in the face of overwhelming institutionalised brutality and violence. The poet feels and is able to make a connection with his forbears because he appreciates and is grateful for a simple fact: his achievements and accolades rest on the bloodied backs of their servitude. So too may this be said for most of the Indo-Fijian community. Lest one forgets, this is an opportune time for giving some thought to making this day a public holiday. The title of the work is a metaphor and is also a poem. An island is surrounded by sea, cut off from other islands. Memories are an intensely individual emotion: many may share them but only one can experience them uniquely. We perceive our surroundings in slightly different ways. These works are all about reflecting on the eventful road the poet's life has taken. The insights have been enhanced by the fruits of academia, the brief tango with power, the interplay between East and West and the return home to complete the cycle. In these islands which engender an aching ambivalence, both of belonging and alienation, the loneliness speaks of the isolation we all feel at particular glimpses of the past to which only the self is witness. As we grow and mature, there emerges a longing, a yearning for that which is no more. It is a desire for connection, for rootedness. The poet is able to give voice to countless others who identify with these circumstances. One senses it in Indo-Fijian migrs whether in Auckland, Sydney, Vancouver, Los Angeles or London. There is a certain whimsy and wistfulness. Of what might have been, had they not had to make choices. They will ever remain incomplete, having left an indelible part of themselves in these islands. It is the perennial plight of the immigrant, that only time heals with subsequent generations. The official narrative of our islands since indenture is of distance and separation. Minimalist contact was the order of the day. The poet conjures up refreshing antidotes to this slant. In Matalita he recalls the Fijian woman from the nearby village who breastfed him as a baby. The intimacy of the contact conveys a powerful imagery that is by turns shocking and inspiring. An IndoFijian baby's lips sucking on Fijian teats. What a wonderful portrait of colourblind nurturing. In Tota's Tale, Totaram recounts the kindness of Fijian neighbours whose timely arrival on his doorstep saved him from certain death. While Voices in the River celebrates the passion of youth: virile, vibrant and alive, knowing little of ethnic boundaries and much of earthy lust. Only in recent years and by that I mean perhaps the last decade, has the Indo-Fijian community begun more actively to explore and investigate their Girmitya origins. It has moved beyond historical record into a more literate form in poetry, short stories and longer fiction. This poet was in the vanguard. In the portraits he paints of both his parents, he honours the simple yet eternal values they possessed. A bequest of a rural culture several millennia old. A way of life that thrived on adversity, accepting them as divine trials that were to be borne and overcome. It was in the small, obscure settlement near Nadi that the child was father to the man. The Girmityas and those who followed recognised early that beyond the canefields lay a better life. The poet's parents wanted more for their children. It was the purest form of love. To enable them to aspire to the stars, Nana and Nani made the necessary sacrifices.

In reality, it was a two-edged sword. With success and good fortune often came separation. Not of kinship or blood ties but of empathy. It is when parent and child have grown apart, silence and intermittent conversation of little consequence become the bridge between them. What would the poet's parents have made of their son's success? They would naturally have been proud as is the wont of all good parents. As rural folk, they would have given thanks to the gods for smiling on their offspring. And then got on with their lives, intimately intertwined with the endless passing of the seasons. Equanimity was a trait of the Girmitya and their immediate descendants. They took what life offered in a balanced manner. They celebrated good fortune and accepted the vicissitudes suffered with grace and resignation. They would have been intrigued yet bemused about the lyrical offerings of their erudite son. To think this all began in a small settlement near Nadi, surrounded by cane fields and close to the river of the poet's fond imaginings is a saga worthy in itself. And who is Satendra Nandan the man? The descendant of Girmityas and the product of the hallowed halls of learning in Fiji, Australia, India and England. One anchored in family: wife, children, parents, siblings and wider, providing the ties that both affirm and illuminate. He draws strength from the age old culture beyond the seas that is a part of his heritage. As are these islands which his forbears made their home. This is where the odyssey began to adulthood. The innocence of childhood, the explorations of the intervening years and the transforming capacity of education. As it broadened and liberated the mind, so other mileposts and destinations beckoned beyond our islands. The adult was fast becoming a citizen of a state without borders or geographical location. In roaming the corridors of memory, the poet conjures up so many images that evoke the catholicity of this exposure. They are vivid, detailed and possess an immediacy that captivates. He writes of Christ's crucifixion with a poignancy that belies his Hindu upbringing. This is a man with a gift for imagination. Of putting himself in another's shoes. In Easter 88 the poet writes of that seminal event two thousand years ago. One that in some small way resonates in the overthrow of the Bavadra Coalition Government. There is in the verses about the first coup whether in Arjun's Anguish, A Bloodless Coup or The Pen, The Gun an unutterable sadness, a despair that captures the poet's sentiments admirably. It was the loss of a precious innocence. What marks the poet's writings is the absence of cynicism in him. That is not to say it is fantasy, as he recognises it in others. But there is none in him because he believes in the essential goodness of humankind. Only part of the poet belongs here, although his work pays tribute to his cherished roots in these islands. This poet is the sum total of his experiences. Australia, India and England have equal claim to him as well. But so do all those by whom the poet has been shaped in their writings. He is a citizen of the planet. Under one cover, the poet has assembled and demonstrated the versatility of his talent. It marks a new beginning: a period of reengagement with the land of his birth. This stands as a fitting testament to the poet himself in the absence of rancour, resentment or any ill will he might have had towards some of us. But Satendra Nandan has always had an abiding vision of a larger humanity. One in which we can be justly proud to see extant in this distinguished son of our islands. I would like to think of this work as a catharsis. Its emergence may be seen in the context of the poet's semi-permanent return to his homeland. He is making peace with her. The gesture is neither triumphant

nor pretentious in nature. More an act of selflessness from one whose motherland dwells ever in his heart, and for whom he has an abundance of affection. Time allows some of us to endure the unbearable and occasionally forgive the hurt and damage so senselessly and callously inflicted. The poet does this in The Loneliness of Islands saying in his own inimitable style that beyond hatred, bitterness, despair and misunderstanding, there is love, compassion and forbearance for all of us. With those words, I am honoured to launch The Loneliness of Islands by Satendra

Gandhi's grief, Mahatma's glory

Professor Satendra Nandan Thursday, October 02, 2008 Mahatma Gandhi shares a laugh with his granddaughters. Picture: BETTMANN/ CORBIS October 2 is Mahatma Gandhi's 139th birth anniversary. It is being marked in a function at The University of Fiji, Saweni, Lautoka. Professor Satendra Nandan writes about his visit to the place where Gandhi was assassinated and his girmit and Fiji connections. This year on January 30, I visited the Birla House on Tees January Marg in New Delhi. It is in the prayer garden of this house that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, less than a year after India won her freedom. The leafy and wide New Delhi Marg-Street is now named Tees January Marg, commemorating the Mahatma's martyrdom. Gandhi, after saving millions of lives from communal savagery, spent his last 144 days in an austere and plain room at Birla House. India's vivisection had stained his tryst with destiny. "How can we light the lamps?" he agonised: He had witnessed too much, too late. He had experienced a civilisation undoing itself. From Gandhi's room to the spot where he was shot three times, at point blank range, is exactly 174 steps. Each step is now marked in rough reddish concrete footprints. Gandhi died on the spot, with two words on his lips. It took me a long time to visit this place of pilgrimage for millions. In January the winter sun is low in Delhi, trying to shine through the enveloping dust and a kite-circling sky. On that fateful Friday in 1948, Gandhiji passed along the cordoned lane towards his prayer platform in the garden, where a congregation was waiting. He was striding towards his usual seat five steps remained. He was running late. Punctuality was part of his personality. As he strode, he took his hands off the shoulders of two young women, Abha and Manu - 'my walking sticks', he called them. He folded his palm in a namaskaar indicating, in the ancient way, that I bow to the divinity in you, friends and strangers. Suddenly a khaki-clad young man from the reverential crowd elbowed his way towards Bapuji, the father of the nation. Gandhi, thinking someone was coming to touch his feet in a gesture of humility and respect, remonstrated: I'm already 10 minutes late for prayers.

Manu tried to stop the intruder by thrusting her left hand forward. Nathuram Godse pushed her out of his way, scattering the notebook, a spittoon and a rosary, which she was carrying. As she bent to pick up the bare essentials and utensils of Gandhi's daily life, the assassin planted himself in front of the frail, half-wrapped figure of Gandhi and fired three shots from a rusting pistol in quick succession. The last words the Mahatma uttered were 'He Ram' Oh God! A spreading crimson spot appeared on his immaculately washed white shawl. The hands, which he had raised in namaskaar-greeting to millions, slowly came down. The limp body that had fasted so often to save millions of lives sank to the ground: the hallowed earth receiving her holiest son. Gandhi breathed his last at 5.17pm. Today, if you visit the house of remembrance, there's a martyr's column with He Ram carved in Hindi and below it inscribed 5.17pm, 30.1.48. Not far from those stark details of death are his words: "I know the path. It is straight and narrow. It is like the edge of a sword. I rejoice to walk on it." The Brila House now has an impressive administrative block. In it I met Ashok Kumar covered in brown shawl with a woollen cap. 'I'm a humble servant,' he told me. And then offered me a cup of sweetest tea. "After his death, there was not a single communal death. Gandhi wanted people to produce everything from Mother Earth, if you cared and cultivated the soil," said Ashok. "After all, uranium also comes from the soil. Bapuji used to say there's enough for the need of everybody; but not enough for the greed of even one of us," added Ashok Kumar, originally from Mathura, Krishna's mythical birthplace. I asked Ashok to show me Gandhiji's room: his bedroom, meeting room, study all rolled into one where prime ministers and presidents, kings and queens, writers and scientists, journalists and geniuses, peasants and princes came to talk to him, to feel his charismatic presence. The room is in the same pristine condition sixty years after his assassination: a pair of wooden sandals, a spittoon, a pair of rimmed glasses, a white shawl, a dhoti made of khadi, a note book, a pen, a timbered-bed for sleeping, when he didn't sleep on the floor. It is said that when Gandhi died the value of his personal possessions was barely five dollars, less than the price of the pen with which I'm writing this. If Gandhi was killed with three bullets, India was divided with the strokes of a pen. Lines were drawn across homes and hamlets by a person who hadn't even visited the vast sub-continent of 300 million people of almost every race and religion: exactly the population of the US today. India's, of course, has exceeded one billion in 60 years since independence. Gandhi had two profound historical connections with Fiji. First, it was among the girmityas and small Indian merchants of South Africa that his most formative years, from the age of 23-46, were shaped. His irresistible ideas of Satyagraha were hammered on the anvil of suffering of ordinary people against the most extraordinary empire. It is the greatest epic story of Indian experience written outside India. Its hero, of course, is M K Gandhi, Attorney; his makings and markings were radically deepened by his life of service among the indentured and enterprising small shopkeepers. If he hadn't gone to South Africa, it is possible, after his return from London, he would have ended up supporting the Empire with an MBE medal, or even a knighthood "for meritorious services to the British Empire". He made a dispossessed, disenfranchised people into a formidable fighting force of peace. It is these people who gave him the strength of spirit to struggle for equality of citizenship, the responsibilities of

a community with equal human dignity and decency. Under General Smuts South Africa was a ruthless regime of racial supremacists. It is among them he developed and defined, deployed and defended, his unassailable weapons of the Satyagraha, holding on to truth, in act and thought. To fight for justice, he said, you had to be just to others. Among the indentured, he gained insights into the true state of a people's subjection. And how deeply complicit were the people themselves: Caesar would not be a wolf, if Romans were not sheep! In his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi has an extraordinary chapter on an Indian indentured labourer, Balasundram. Balasundram has been brutally beaten by a ruthless 'coolumber'. Bleeding, he arrives into Gandhi's office; Gandhi is preparing to leave Durban for Bombay. He had settled the feuding merchants litigation through arbitration for which he'd been sent. The last paragraph of the chapter on Balasundram reads: "I have said that Balasundaram entered my office, head-gear in hand. There was a particular pathos about the situation which also showed our humiliation. I have already narrated the incident when I was forced to take off my turban. A practice had been forced on every indentured labourer and every Indian stranger to take off his headgear when visiting a European, whether the head-gear was a cap, a turban, a scarf wrapped around the head, a salute even with both hands was not sufficient. "Balasundaram thought he should follow the practice even with me. This was the first case in my experience. I felt humiliated and asked him to tie up his scarf. He did so not without a certain hesitation, but I could perceive the pleasure on his face. "It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings." The passage has many remarkable perceptions, none more extraordinary than the last sentence. An indentured labourer is written about by his name. Even the second last sentence is unusual: note the humiliation Gandhi, the dandy lawyer, feels when this wounded girmitya takes off his humble scarf: the symbol of his ragged dignity. It is a marvellous and revolutionary way of seeing the Other, who is your own. It demanded a radical revaluation of what it means to be human. A ceaseless quest for a common humanity had begun. Richard Atterborough says in his book In Search of Gandhi that he was so moved by this single sentence that he carried it in his mind for 20 years and finally made the film Gandhi. The other connection that Gandhi has with Fiji is through CF Andrews. Every school child and educated person should know about Reverend Charles Freer Andrews. There are other people, touched by the Gandhian magic, who have come to Fiji, but none, I feel, had the depth and compassion of CF Andrews. Or was so close to Gandhi. Gandhi called CF Andrews, "one of the greatest and best Englishmen. I've not known a better man or a better Christian." Andrews had arrived in India in 1904, aged 33, to teach at St Stephens College in Delhi. He called it his "Indian birthday". Gandhi's struggles in South Africa for equality in Empire and against racial discrimination needed a critical eye. G K Gokhale, Gandhi's political mentor, sent Andrews to go and be with Gandhi: to Gokhale, Andrews was "a gift from God". Andrews arrived in Durban on January 1, 1912. He had never seen Gandhi. And like one who believed in an invisible power, Gandhi's radiance of words and actions had ignited Andrews' Christian imagination, as Gandhi's had been by the Sermon on the Mount.

As Andrews came down the ship's gangway, he was introduced to a slight, ascetically dressed person in a white dhoti and kurta, the common dress of indentured labourers. At that moment Andrews bent down and touched Gandhi's bare feet. This spontaneous traditional gesture of respect horrified the local elite. The editor of a Durban Dutch newspaper expostulated to him: "Really you know Mr Andrews, really you know, we don't do that sort of thing in Natal. We don't do it, Mr Andrews. I consider the action most unfortunate, most unfortunate." Andrews wrote to Tagore, his best friend: "They boil over with indignation, that as an Englishman, mind you, should have touched the feet of an Asiatic. When I remind them that Christ, St Paul, and St John were Asiatic, they grow restive and say that things were altogether different then.' Just as Gokhale had sent Andrews to be with Gandhi, now Gandhi sent Andrews to Fiji. Charlie, as Gandhi fondly called him, became an impassioned crusader for the indentured in Fiji. Today in Fiji we've two schools named after CF Andrews. It was among the Indians in Fiji that he was first named, in 1917, Deenabandhu, the friend of the poor. Indenture was abolished in 1917. On January 1, 1920, the last indentured labourer was set free from his bondage, not only in Fiji but in every colony of the Empire. "The abolition of the indentured labour system was CF Andrews's greatest single service to the Indian people," wrote a distinguished civil servant of the Raj. The abolition of this imperial abomination had come to him as a commission from Christ Andrews wrote: "One morning about noonday, while I was thinking of these things, lying on a chair on the verandah I saw in front of me the face of a man in a vision. I was not sleeping; my eyes were quite open. It was that poor run-away coolie I had seen in Natal. As I was looking, the face seemed to change in front of me and appeared as the face of Jesus Christ. He seemed to look into my face for a long, long time and then the vision faded away. This epiphany had come to him while he visited Java, while visiting the remains of Buddhist civilisation at Borobudur created out of the most ancient Indian diaspora. Sitting among the ruins, he writes: "There came to me a new vision of humanity in its suffering and sorrow, its sacrifice and love of service, intimately bound up with supreme personality of the Buddha himself ... preaching to the lowest of the human race - nay, preaching also us. St Francis did to every bird and beast and trees and flowers, the same message of universal love." Later Andrew remembered that vision and wrote a poem titled 'The Indentured Coolie': "There he crouched, Back and arms scarred, like a hunted thing, Terror-Striken. All within me surged towards him, While tears rushed. Then, a change. Through his eyes I saw Thy glorious face

Ah, the wonder! Calm, unveiled in deathless beauty, Lord of sorrow." In the friendship of Gandhi and Andrews, there may be illuminations for us also. How people of different faiths inspired and awakened the goodness in the hearts and minds of subjects and empires. And little Fiji played a small but unforgettable role in lighting civilsational values beyond ideology and history. As I walked out of Gandhi's garden, the winter sun was setting behind luminous ruins in one of the world's most ancient-modern cities. On the banks of Yamuna river at Rajghat, where Gandhi was cremated, burned a single flame - as it continues to do in the seasons of the soul: summer, autumn, winter, spring. For the soul has no country, no national borders. It is like our ocean, pacific and restless.

fiji a racist State: Nandan

TIMOTHY NAIVALUWAQA Wednesday, April 30, 2008

FTU general secretary Agni Deo Singh, right, and Professor Satendra Nandan at the FTU annual conference in Nadi yesterday ACADEMIC and former Cabinet minister Professor Satendra Nandan believes Fiji is a racist country, politically. Professor Nandan told the Fiji Teachers Union annual conference in Nadi yesterday, that despite all the talk of globalisation, Fiji still remains a deeply fragmented society. Professor Nandan, who is currently the Director of the Centre of Writing at the University of Fiji, said some people have benefitted a lot by transforming racial thinking into a political art. He said many people keep claiming that race is a fact of life and it should be our way of life. Professor Nandan said racial fundamentalism was most damaging and reprehensive. He said as thinking citizens, everyone had to challenge it all the time, in every institution, act and in every lesson planned, learnt and taught.

"It has defined us in our Constitution; it has corroded our conscience; it has diminished us as people, citizens and human beings. "We have allowed ourselves to be defined by others; we've taken their valuation of ourselves. Once you define a person by the racial tag, no further thought is necessary." Professor Nandan said that in the past 130 years, Fiji and Fiji citizens had undergone many transformations. "But in the 21 years since 1987, a segment of our society has undergone changes deeper than our ancestors in the century before that," he said.

Media freedom is vital

Friday, April 09, 2010 THE freedom of the press is very important. It plays an important role in moving this country forward. This is what academic Professor Satendra Nandan believes and he made it known during the public consultation of the draft Media Industry Development Decree 2010 in Lautoka yesterday. Dr Nandan the Dean of School of Humanities and Arts at the University of Fiji said the media was a powerful institute in shaping the future of any country. "The role of the media is very essential," he said. He was hopeful that there would be good things that would come out of this decree. Meanwhile, the publisher of the Jet, a community newspaper in Nadi believed that the decree would be good for the media industry. Shalendra Prasad said that it would give the media a sense of responsibility when reporting. "It will allow us to look carefully at what we are presenting to the public," he said. Mr Prasad said that journalists and media companies need not to worry about the fines that would be imposed, if they were doing the right thing.

Back to the drawing board

Mereseini Marau Friday, April 09, 2010

Dr Satendra Nandan at the media decree consultation at Waterfront Hotel, Lautoka AFTER public consultations on the draft Media Industry Development Decree, officials will go back to the drawing board. This is according to Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who heads the Justice and Commerce portfolios. He said they had a lot of issues to consider when drawing up the final decree. "We will be taking all those issues on board," he said. He said the consultation in Lautoka was very fruitful and there were useful comments raised by members of the public, which included academic Dr Satendra Nandan. While Mr Sayed-Khaiyum did not give an exact date on when the decree would be implemented, he said it would be done soon. "We will deal with it as practically soon as possible," he said. Mr Sayed-Khaiyum was in Lautoka yesterday for the second and final day of public consultation on the decree. He confirmed that the consultation in Labasa was cancelled because there was no expression of interest made from the area.

Decree defines functions

Thursday, July 01, 2010 A NEW decree issued by head of government Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama defines the Media Development Authority of Fiji as the major push behind the development of the media industry. The decree has defined the functions of the authority to: encourage, promote and facilitate the development of media organisations and media services in Fiji. It will advise and make recommendations to the Information Minister in regards to matters related to the media.

The authority is to facilitate the provision of a quality range of media services in Fiji, which serve the national interest. The other functions include ensuring that media services in Fiji are maintained at a high standard in all respects and in particular in respect of the quality, balance, fair, judgement and range of "subject-matter". The authority will also be a watchdog of the media to ensure the content of any media service does not include anything that is against the public interest or order, national interest or which offends good taste or decency and creates communal discord. Academic Dr Satendra Nandan has been appointed the authority's chairman, while its other members have yet to be named.

Chief: Make day special

Wednesday, May 16, 2007 FORMER Vice-President Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi says there should be a public holiday to commemorate the arrival of the Girmitiyas given the sacrifices they have made for the country. Ratu Joni, when launching Professor Satendra Nandan's The Loneliness of Islands at the University of Fiji in Saweni yesterday, said the Girmitiyas had played a key role in the shaping this country. He said given the hard labour and efforts they had put forward since they arrived 128 years ago, a public holiday would be befitting the occasion. He said a lot had been said about the Indians in the country and "this is an opportune time to put some thought in making this day a public holiday." He said the book of poems gave an insight of the struggles faced by the Girmitiyas. Ratu Joni said the book launch was timely especially when it marked the 128 years of the arrival of Girmitiyas. Professor Nandan, a former politician is no stranger in the writing field. The Loneliness of the Islands reflected his growth as a poet shaped by his childhood memories of his girmitiya grandparents in a village in Nadi. In 1976, he published a slender volume of poems, Faces in a Village, which was the first book of poetry in English published in Fiji. He also wrote Voices in the River in 1983 and Lines Across Black Waters in 1997. He said Lines Across the Black Water was his first book which was launched near his birthplace in Nadi. Professor Nandan said the book would also be launched in Barcelona and Vancouver. He was involved in Fiji politics from 1978 to 1987 where he was also a minister in the late Timoci Bavadra cabinet. He is a Foundation Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts at the University of Fiji. -=======================

A writer's journey
Satendra Nandan Sunday, April 18, 2010 I'd arrived in Delhi from an obscure little village by the largest ocean, nestling between an airport and a jagged range of brooding volcanic mountains: amphitheatrical and dramatic. The village was named Votualevu; the airport Nadi; the ocean Pacific; and the country was 'Phiji' as my indentured grandparents pronounced Fiji. Few students in my hostel knew where Fiji was: Ah, so you've come from Fuji? And when I tried to show them on a world map, locally published, the two tiny dots in the middle of the Pacific were always missing. I managed by pointing to the two unnamed dots that made up New Zealand. It certainly developed my distorted sense of geography: and some of us began to realise that this archipelago was the most distant islands to which our subcontinental ancestors had been shipped from their land-locked villages of the United Provinces, later joined by labourers from around Madras. I'd flown to Sydney by PAN AM from Nadi. Then by sea in a P&O liner named Strathnaver via Melbourne, Adelaide, Fremantle, Colombo, Bombay. From there by train to Delhi. For me it was an extraordinary voyage by a plane, a ship, a train. In Fiji I was more used to sugar-cane trucks and horses. A free passenger train was run by the CSR company of Australia on whose sugarcane plantations our grandparents were transplanted. The slave crop grew and their children grew on them, surrounded by seas of green fields and blue mountains and a green-blue ocean full of fish. The free train was mainly for the girmit people. A rare Government of India scholarship through its visionary generosity opened the world for me as it did to many Third World students. We'd read a version of imperial history of the Empire for the Cambridge examination but Australia and New Zealand were not part of my imagination. Besides Indians didn't play rugby. From a one-street, dusty town Nandi to Delhi-New Delhi was the longest journey anyone in my family had ever made. Even my grandparents, both paternal and maternal, under indenture - that new system of slavery with an expiry date, - hadn't traveled that far. Fiji, on the map, looks closer to Calcutta. They had little idea of geography, less of history. Many were told Fiji was a 'tapu', in the Bay of Bengal. They had no conception of a bay or a beach for they had never seen a sea-wave or a ship. They were in their teens when they embarked on Leonidas in 1879. They arrived, the first ones, in Fiji waters on May 14. And over the next 40 years, in 87 ships, more than 60,000 men, women, children were transported and transplanted on the islands. And most never returned: even Valmiki and Vyasa couldn't imagine such an exile in their epics. That is the great Indian silence even in the current global noise of the Indian diaspora, mainly for business. I began on this note because I wish to chart the journey of a small writer through the poetics, politics and power of literature; both its freedom and its exilic dimensions and its capacity to imagine the others. Last year on my birthday one of my daughters, Kavita from Canberra, sent me a recently published book titled Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and the Australian Public Life. Seven Australian writers are discussed. There's no Australian-Pacific-Asian writer on the substantial list. Kavita's inscription, in part, reads: 'someone who made the bridge between literature and politics a

long time ago'. So this personal preoccupation here is about the potency of literature through an archipelago, an island-continent and a subcontinent: Fiji-Australia-India. Rather epical, you might think but then I grew up on two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In the nineteenth century the term that defined our Pacific region - Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific - was Australasia. The Fiji-Australia connections have existed for almost two centuries. Last year, on May 15, Fiji commemorated the 130th anniversary of the arrival of the first Indian migrants from the timeless and teeming villages of Northern India via the port of Calcutta to serve the colonial interests of Britain, Australia and the chiefly hierarchy of the native elite - so common in the Polynesian part of the Pacific. The reinvented chiefly system had ceded Fiji to Great Britain in the 1870s on the advice of their colonial counselors. Soon after, in 1879, the peasant Indians were recruited and transported to the islands to prevent the dislocation of native population and their dispossession - a common experience of colonisation in many islands and continents. In that sense Fiji's historical experience is a unique fragment in the imperial narrative. Today 90% of all land in Fiji belongs to the indigenous owners. The Deed of Cession was obtained through evangelical Christianity and imperial annexation. Into that cauldron were thrown in the labourers from India. The last indentured labourer was freed from his bondage on January 1, 1920, thanks to the agitation of Mahatma Gandhi, CF Andrews, Benarsidas Chaturvedi and an Australian named Hannah Dudley, among others. In the past 23 years Fiji has been through a series of crises triggered by the first coup on May 14, 1987 - exactly 108 years after the arrival of the first Indian migrants in the South Seas. 108, I'm told, is a lucky number in Indian numerology. It is too early to tell. In the past two decades more than twice the number of indentured migrants, who had come over 40 years from 1879 - 1920, Fiji Indians have migrated to Australia and New Zealand. Sydney is home to many; Auckland is the most Fiji-Indian city outside Suva. From an inquiline existence in the country of their birth many have found genuine citizenship in these societies. For many Fiji Indians Australia and New Zealand are home. Distances have coalesced; but dislocations have deepened and deceptions have multiplied. Our journeys have become manifold. How does, then, a writer, small or big, confront and explore this experience: to hold a mirror and a lamp and show reality and justice in his or her writing. Perhaps it is through the creative acts of writing within an exilic condition that one may find a threshold, if not a path. For literature takes us into a pathless universe like voyages in an ocean, unlike history's silvery snail marks on the scarred land. In December 1987, in my forties, with Jyoti, I was leaving Fiji for Canberra. We'd probably had to pay for extra baggage to Air Pacific-QANTAS; my grandparents had not even paid their passages. For some of us the world changed long before 9/11. Our two daughters were with us. I grew up on the dictum: 'Fiji was our one and only home'. No-one from my family had ever migrated. Then to suddenly become homeless in one's home. There was certainly a great emptiness in my heart not in the Canberra landscape with its contemplative lakes and gentle rolling hills, ghostly copses of gums and the four seasons refracted in the leaves of the transplanted trees. I felt homeless but not hopeless.

I'd two extraordinary advantages: I'd spent my most formative years as a student at Delhi University. I'd fallen in love and married my college sweet-heart, aptly named Jyoti. In Delhi I saw the special quality of light. Before I returned to Fiji I'd taught in two public schools Delhi and Doon. Vikram Seth, a famous writer now, survived my teaching at Doon in the 60s. A brief stint as a trainee-journalist on the New Delhi Statesman gave me a life-long desire to be a scribe of sorts. If journalists are failed writers, so are many writers. I became an academic. Exile has many dimensions in literature and life. Writers have written movingly about their exilic conditions. Exile is perhaps inscribed at some level into the experience of every human being - it is a constant of our common predicament. Indeed exile within a place is often still more poignant than exile from or exile to a place. Edward Said has added his own Palestinian reflections on exile out of which creativity fashions its own themes and metaphors and passions. And the Indian epics are full of exilic encounters and explorations within the subcontinent's subconscious. Patrick White, my favourite novelist, opened an islandcontinent where many Europeans felt exiled. However, because of my experiences in Delhi and Canberra, I was able to survive the tears and tears of my heart in May 1987. The fall of an island politician is compellingly described in Vidia Naipaul's The Mimic Men. The publication of Patrick French's the Authorised Biography of V.S.Naipaul, The World is What It Is, underscores the condition with immense force of the writer's writing, travel and political displacement. But it was Canberra which gave me the gift of a rear-view mirror to keep Fiji in my vision. The small city, with its transplanted trees, gave me a new life. Its autumnal colours added a special perception of beauty to a broken life. Canberra gave me a life of the mind, once again, of teaching, reading and writing, and hoeing my own garden. My family grew up; often I walked on the gull-filled shores of Lake Burley Griffin with cokatoos hanging from branches with Hawke hairdos. And I made friends. By a sheer coincidence, Griffin, the designer-architect of Canberra, is buried in Lucknow - he died there in 1937. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents had migrated from the ancient vicinity of this most multicultural city to the islands. For generations they had never trudged beyond a few miles of their habitation of mythology, mantras and mudhuts. But the longing in me to return to the days of adolescence persisted even during the luxury of exile in Canberra: the nostalgia of a marbled sea-scape, the brooding volcanic mountains, the sun emerging from the folds of the ranges, their shadows looming over our little village nestled in the green seas of sugarcane, the gently swaying palms like native dancers, the storm-tossed bures and lean-tos, the fishermen fishing on horsebacks, the riders to the sea. The two rainbows among the deepening shadows of the ever green raintrees, the lights of the airport, the flashing of the searchlight as a tourist jet is about to land from Sydney or Auckland or Los Angeles; the sounds of Fiji Hindi in Fijian accents, and the radio full of sad songs from Bollywood echoed in my heartbeats. And in the river of my childhood a soft rain falling as Jyoti and I sit at a riverside cafe sipping cappuccino. Memory retrieves the past by drips in small hiccups. And sometimes one's cup runneth over - with love. I feel injustices must be made visible, legible, by writers and teachers of literature.

The untold stories must be told. I wrote some years ago that the noblest epic of India is the unique diaspora of the twice-banished people found from the South Pacific to South Africa, from Trinidad to Timbuctoo. But a writer's vision must be strengthened by a good eyesight and feet on the ground. Here I'd like to conclude by mentioning a transformation in Sitiveni Rabuka, the man who introduced the culture of coups in the islands. I met him, for the first time, on August 22, 2008. Soon after he published an article in the Fiji Times titled When Forgiveness Heals. I'll give you a few selected extracts from that rather unusual piece written by him to illustrate my central point that literature works its miracles in ordinary life, and daily living. Rabuka wrote: "When I visited The University of Fiji on August 22, 2008, the Head of The University, Professor Satendra Nandan gave me three books as his gift to me. One of them, The Loneliness of Islands, contains poems I had never heard of. The one that went straight for my heart is simply titled 'EASTER 88' with 'for Timoci' under the title. "Many of Professor Nandan's poems, written after 1987, ring of the hurt feelings of a man deeply affected by my action of that year. "But no line hurt me and caused me more guilty grief than the bracketed line in the second verse: 'I've traveled from an island With a soldier's wound on my side (One who should have protected me); Still I am alive Something precious remains.' "That par, in parenthesis, is like a bullet to the heart! "So when my eyes opened to the hurt in the words of Professor Nandan, I realised that I have not done enough to console or repair the spirit of those I had hurt. "This article is an appeal for forgiveness for all I have hurt and have not been able to forgive - To you all, I apologise, and say: I will never support anyone promoting divisive strategies in this God enlightened land. "All should know that forgiveness heals." I, of course, responded with a piece of my own; the Fiji Times titled it The Strangest Meeting. The extraordinary thing about the Colonel's piece is that I have not known any dictator or Prime Minister, who after reading a poem, felt it was necessary to redeem himself by a public apology published in a national daily, founded in 1869, Gandhi's year of birth. To me that alone justifies the freedom that comes through writing. And I had written the poem while I was experiencing a personal exile in Canberra. Most significantly, this experience, since our return to Fiji, Jyoti's and mine, has also given me a perspective.

I find it is summed up in a small poem by another poet. The Gift 'A day so happy. Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers. There was nothing on earth I wanted to possess. I knew no one worth my envying him. Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot. To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me. In my body I felt no pain. When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails. This is the gift of literature beyond words in the islands of our mind.' @$:n Professor Satendra Nandan is the Foundation Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts of The University of Fiji. He is Professor Emeritus, University of Canberra; Adjunct Professor, CAPPE, CSU, ANU; Director, Transparency International, Fiji and Director, GandhiTappoo Ashram for Peace & Ethics, Writing & Dialogue. His qualifications are BA (Hons), BEd, Delhi, Cert Uni, London, MA Linguistics, MA C'Wealth Lit, Leeds, PhD ANU.

Literature does matter

Dr KAVITA NANDAN Sunday, October 28, 2007

+ Enlarge this image Kavita Nandan ... carried Fijis flag with her parents in Canada

Recently, I attended the 14th triennial conference of ACLALS The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies in Vancouver, Canada. The purpose of ACLALS is to support and organise Commonwealth Literature studies and it holds one conference triennially. The theme of this conference was Literature of our times. Over 350 literary scholars, critics and writers had collected from the Commonwealth and beyond Asia, Africa, Caribbean, Australia, Pacific and Europe in the lecture halls and theatres of the University of British Columbia to discuss the role of literature in modern times. A time of transnational relations, terrorism, global warming and globalisation. I had come to deliver a paper Writing as Healing: Fijiindians the Twice-banished and launch Writing the Pacific: An Anthology of short fiction and poetry. There were very few scholars from the Pacific at the conference Sina Vaai from the University of Samoa and the chair of SPACALS, Seri Laungpinith, head at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, Professor Satendra Nandan and Dr Jyoti Nandan from The University of Fiji and, of course, me. We attended each other's papers with an enthusiastic sense of Pacific loyalty! It struck me how so few people around the world, let alone in the Commonwealth were truly interested in the Pacific and Fiji, in particular. I met one Australian academic from the University of Cornell who was struggling to encourage her students and peers to see the Pacific as a viable specialisation. I told her to 'keep the faith' and, yes, buy the book as well! It struck me as extraordinary that my parents and I were all in the same field literature, and all teaching in Fiji, even if in different universities and cities. What child has the privilege to have had two sets of footprints to walk in? And I recognise it as a privilege that my parents could encourage the love of literature as a career while many other parents had encouraged practical subjects like accounting, medicine and IT. While it has been an advantage it has created a sense of magic and freedom in the world it has been a struggle; a mental struggle to believe that this is the right path to follow in the face of the grim reality of the humanities; in universities around the world the humanities are shrinking and there are fewer and fewer jobs in this area. There is the despairing general thought is reading, writing and teaching literature ever going to save anything? Nevertheless, I believe teaching and learning literature is very important in an increasingly unpredictable Pacific. In Fiji, the wedges of racialism, power struggles and economic disparity continue to be driven deeper between people. We need new ways of thinking about these issues in order for there to be positive changes.

Literature has the ability to alter our consciousness by helping us understand our specificities of culture, history, location and common humanity. It sharpens our understanding of injustice and dispossession. The highlight of the conference was not an academic but a creative artist the Nobel prize-winning writer Derek Walcott. Mr Walcott keeps the faith. He hails from a small island in the Caribbean St Lucia, and his belief in where he came from being an important place worth writing about has put the Caribbean on the world map and not just the literary one. Mr Walcott and his achievements embody the significance of literature in our times; after all the Nobel prize is given to someone not secured in an ivory tower but very much in the world and someone who makes a difference; making us care for the neglected places of the world because of the devastating effects of colonialism and the potency of creativity. VS Naipaul, from the Caribbean Trinidad is a Nobel recipient as well. No other writer has written so powerfully about the experience of colonisation from the perspective of the colonised. Naipaul's consistent writing about the loss, anxiety, insecurity, dislocation, rootlessness and exile suffered by the colonised is his strong indictment of colonialism, with the unusual honesty of a postcolonial writer. This conference was not simply about colonial bashing but asked the question: How are we to live in this world that has been deeply seared by colonisation? Mr Walcott's example is inspirational because colonialism of his region opened the world out to him, and the more shores he stepped on, broadened his horizons as a creative artist, writer and man. It so happened that after Mr Walcott had dazzled us with his readings and comments, that it was my turn on the stage to launch Writing the Pacific. As I stood there before the podium, in my red sulu jaba and a frangipani in my hair, Derek Walcott was in the audience listening to me, or at least just there! There was a 10-minute break after that and perhaps I'll always be known as the young writer who read after Derek Walcott or even 'who the heck was that?' Whatever it be, I had my post-colonial moment in the sun! And a photograph with the Caribbean's most notable poet. My paper was about how writing can be a way of healing for the twice banished Fijiindian. First his ancestors were exiled from their motherland India, and now their descendants are being exiled from their motherland Fiji. I looked at Stolen Worlds: Fijiindian Fragments (2005), a book of memoirs written by Fijiindians who have migrated to the West but remember their childhoods and growing up in Fiji. It suggested how going back to the homeland imaginatively can be healing in a way that physically going may not be. Writing becomes that home and homeland for the homeless.

Papers were given by hundreds of participants on themes such as: Literature as resistance, Literature of Human Rights, Literature for promotion of Peace and Justice, Literature in a global cultural economy, Literature in translation and Literature of healing and reconciliation. A number of post-colonial celebrities attended the conference. A keynote address was given on English and the Languages of Cultural Encounter. Professor Robert Young from Oxford and New York argued that the English language is a world language and not simply a hegemonic one. He referred to the case of Indian-English as being the most widely spoken language in the world. There was a great deal of discussion about indigenous rights, but by the same token, post-colonial issues of migrants and settlers were debated. Canada is a settler country, with a migrant and native population. The Inuits of Canada have been acknowledged as the 'First Nation' and they opened the conference with their solemn drum beats and a welcome by an elder. A native writer, Jeanette Armstrong, gave a key note talk: Literature of the Land: An Ethos for These Times. The conference hosted a number of launches and readings from writers around the world. The next ACLALS conference in 2010 will be held in Cyprus but before that the South Pacific regional branch will hold its conference from November 26-29 this year at the National University of Samoa and European ACLALS will be holding it in March next year in Venice. One participant described post-colonialism as a boat that will not sink, so see you on a va'a alo or a gondola! Dr Kavita Nandan is a professor in literature at the University of the South Pacific

It's bad or worse: Nandan

Saturday, March 24, 2007

+ Enlarge this image All ears ... teachers unionist Kamlesh Arya, CID director Senior Superintedent Josaia Rasiga and Immigration head Viliame Naupoto at the anti-corrpution seminar hosted by Transperancy International THE military's clean-up coup serves as a choice between bad and worse, University of Fiji academic Professor Satendra Nandan said this week.

Speaking at an anti-corruption symposium organised by Transparency International, Professor Nandan said the coup was led "from the front by the Commander himself with several years of warning to those whose power had origins in the womb of racial terrorism". "The question for us is not the choice between good and bad, but between bad and worse. I know the interim Government will not take us to heaven, but it may just, and justly, get us out of the hell-hole we've been digging for the past 20 years, he said. "Maybe this coup is to end all coups? A culture of accountability could be cultivated, in every State and civic body. "Is Commodore Frank Bainimarama emerging as the most modern leader from Fiji? He has not invoked indignity or mawkish religiosity or mobs marching and bullying defenceless civilians or peasants and that gives hope. "He has appealed to only one symbol of unity: Our beloved country. And race is no longer bandied as the fact of life. If a thing is illegal, is it necessarily immoral? If an act is unconstitutional, is it unethical," Dr Nandan asked. "Perhaps we're dealing with the lesser evil. Just as there are just wars, are there just coups?" Dr Nandan said the institutions of civil society must be supported and strengthened, including the local academics' association, law society, accountants, retailers association and tourist organisations that make some useful, muted noises but when the real crunch came, they usually sided with the powerful. How else would you account for a small nation where the professionals, as consultants, have done so well, especially since the coups of 1987? He said these were questions of professional ethics. "In a world fraught with terrorism and tyranny, civil society provides a moral ambience to endure and face public scrutiny, and political ethics, which make it possible to live an

It's bad or worse: Nandan

Saturday, March 24, 2007

+ Enlarge this image All ears ... teachers unionist Kamlesh Arya, CID director Senior Superintedent Josaia Rasiga and Immigration head Viliame Naupoto at the anti-corrpution seminar hosted by Transperancy International THE military's clean-up coup serves as a choice between bad and worse, University of Fiji academic Professor Satendra Nandan said this week.

Speaking at an anti-corruption symposium organised by Transparency International, Professor Nandan said the coup was led "from the front by the Commander himself with several years of warning to those whose power had origins in the womb of racial terrorism". "The question for us is not the choice between good and bad, but between bad and worse. I know the interim Government will not take us to heaven, but it may just, and justly, get us out of the hell-hole we've been digging for the past 20 years, he said. "Maybe this coup is to end all coups? A culture of accountability could be cultivated, in every State and civic body. "Is Commodore Frank Bainimarama emerging as the most modern leader from Fiji? He has not invoked indignity or mawkish religiosity or mobs marching and bullying defenceless civilians or peasants and that gives hope. "He has appealed to only one symbol of unity: Our beloved country. And race is no longer bandied as the fact of life. If a thing is illegal, is it necessarily immoral? If an act is unconstitutional, is it unethical," Dr Nandan asked. "Perhaps we're dealing with the lesser evil. Just as there are just wars, are there just coups?" Dr Nandan said the institutions of civil society must be supported and strengthened, including the local academics' association, law society, accountants, retailers association and tourist organisations that make some useful, muted noises but when the real crunch came, they usually sided with the powerful. How else would you account for a small nation where the professionals, as consultants, have done so well, especially since the coups of 1987? He said the Girmit Centre and the first landing place could be made sacred sites for our children and grandchildren to visit, remember and be inspired. "Those who do not read their history are likely to repeat it. Those who do not understand it are condemned by it," he sai

System has failed, says academic

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Nanise Bogitini and Peni Rokodinono at Western Division Youth Summit THE Westminster that we inherited from our colonisers has not delivered the goods, says Professor Satendra Nandan. He said everyone needed to change and think out of the boxes that were now obsolete. He said draft charter suggested some reforms. He said it was not a revolutionary document. Professor Nandan made the comments when opening the Western Youth Summit at the Waterfront Hotel in Lautoka yesterday. "It is reformatory," he said. "We have had an embarrassment of coups symptomatic of something virulent in our nation's bloodstream. A revolutionary document might have suggested a presidential system of government there are countries in our region which have it." Professor Nandan said eligible voter could vote for a person who deserved their trust, confidence and restore faith in Fiji.

"In such a person we need not worry about the colour race, religion of that person," he said. "What will matter is the quality and integrity of the person. If a leader can capture the imagination of a nation, he or she from any ethnic origin could lead this small nation with the distinction and vision. "Another aspect you as the youth of Fiji might wish to scrutinise is the communal system of voting. The fences have walls separating us. Nation building requires pillars not walls which support our political economic social and national structures."

Keep race out

EDITORIAL COMMENT Thursday, May 01, 2008 FIJI is a racially divided country when it comes to politics. That is the fact of the matter, but few people are brave enough to admit this in public. On Tuesday, however, Professor Satendra Nandan admitted at the Fiji Teachers Union annual general meeting that society is deeply fragmented along racial lines. A victim of Sitiveni Rabuka's putsch in 1987 and a long-time stalwart of the Fiji Labour Party, Professor Nandan should know all about the differences which threaten society. He states correctly that these differences are divisive and have the potential to cause irreparable damage. Successive governments have been voted into office on the back of promises to heal divisions and the wounds caused by racial differences. But the truth is that whatever the promises, all political parties have some element of racism in their policies. For until now, that has been the only way to draw a number of voters and supporters to tick that valuable box on the ballot paper. Not one political party can deny that it has made provisions in their manifesto to cater for specific racial groups. This is a form of racism which must end immediately. The time has come for leaders of all communities political or religious to ace a conscious effort to steer people away from race. The issues which affect the country have nothing to do with race. Poverty, violence, crime and land use affect people of all races and religions. Race plays no part in the difficulties our people face in this regard. And so we each have a duty to ensure that race is kept out of politics, no matter what the cost in terms of mileage. Parents must teach their children that no matter what race or creed, we can love our neighbours. In fact, our young people should be encouraged to make friends with people of other races, learn their languages and appreciate their cultures and traditions. This is the real way forward.

By placing ourselves in situations where people of other races and religions are involved, we will find that issues which affect them are equally important to us. It is from this common ground that we can find a national way forward to peace, progress and prosperity. If we are unable or unwilling to find a common way forward, we place this nation and all her people at risk of losing all that is dear to us.

The days of the Girmit era in Fiji

Friday, May 14, 2010 Mangoes A Girmit Story from Satendra Nandan's forthcoming collection, Sea-shells on the Sea-shore, to be published on October 10, 2010. The sharpening of the knife was unmistakable. It had acquired a deadly rhythm. And the cold, shining edge of the dark steel had a dreadful reputation: a murder weapon for slitting throats and chopping off goats' heads. The old man was used to it: he heard it every morning during the cane harvesting season. The grating sound had become a song to his old but sharpened ears: Uth jag musafir bhor bhaiye Ab rein kahan jo sowat hai! Jo sowat hai so khowat hai Jo jagat hai so pawat hai? (Awake O, Traveller! It's dawn, The night's gone, you are still asleep One who sleeps loseth One who is awake finds? His sight had dimmed but his mind was still alive, restless and rippling like the waves of the seven seas, the black waters through which he had travelled more than a century ago. The skull beneath the skin and the world that hollow contained was infinite, endless. Around this time, every morning now memories floated like dust in the strayed rays of a sun setting in some ancient sky. He'd feel overwhelmed but held on to the sound of his son's cane knife against the iron file. He lay on his plaas, made up of dried cane leaves sown into a mattress of a few CSR sacks, a native mat on top, and his warm, black blanket. Black, he felt, was an accommodating colour; it hid the dirt, the saliva and diffused the occasional smell. Only that it reminded him of Ravana during Ramlila. As the rhythm of the filing grew fainter, the old man made the effort to get out of his bed, open the dilapidated door of his bure, walk a few steps leaning on his lathi, to sit on a rough-hewn wooden

structure under the mango tree. Kallu, the dog, lay dozing under it waiting for the morning to chase chickens scrambling for worms amongst the rotting mangoes. It was neither dark nor light. A couple of bats flew from the tree disturbed by the thuck, thuck, of a stick. Several bat-eaten mangoes lay on the early morning earth. The old man winced in pain to see such lovely fruits wasted by bats. So much is wasted in this land - a waste land. In his village, Sultanpur, nothing was wasted: every bit of food came from the gods and mother earth: so he was taught, as a little boy, by his mother and often he remembered that. Distance had mellowed all the caste cruelties; the ancestral land had become holy in his dying sadness. How could he forget that orchard of about a dozen mango trees owned by the zamindar (the landowner) with a handlebar moustache. Ravana's moustache reminded him of the landlord on whose whole fouracre farm they dwelt: his father, mother, a sister and himself. And the daily journey along the little, unforgettable path to the well to fetch water was an excuse: indeed he went to play lachidari with his older sister, Rani, and steal a few mangoes in the predawn darkness. Mother, he breathed, then shuttered the window of his memory by closing his left eye. But the taste of those stolen mangoes: delicious, juicy and sugar sweet: the character of the fibre that made you suck the mango stone till it shone white like a piece of bone. Mangoes in Fiji lacked that sweetness and the people were no different: fruits and flowers, fish and flesh, reflect the nature of people in a place. He was old, his beliefs his prejudices older. Then that fatal dawn: it was winter, the land shrouded in the morning mist, and who would have imagined the zamindar to be up that early. As he picked up the third mango, the voice had boomed: "Arre, launda, aamwa churaat hai, Saasura! Stealing mangoes, you rascal!" The movement of the stick close to his young head, gliding past his left ear like a whiplash. He dropped the third mango and ran and ran leaving his little, familiar road on to a bigger one feeling the footfalls of the zamindar so close by until he ran into a well dressed man with a sun helmet, an arakathi: a recruiting agent during the girmit season. With a mango in his pocket, he held the little finger of the man as he was taken into an iron train: huge and ugly but strong like Ravana. And as the train moved the little boy's right hand clasped the mango tightly, his fingernails piercing it; and there was the delicious fragrance, in a steely cage full of strangers, travellers with undefined destinies, uncertain destinations. As the train snaked its way past the bruise-like village, puffing black smoke in the shadow of which the village dissolved, the boy saw, for the last time, the little, unforgettable path that led from his hut to the well into the lonely orchard. Shiva, his son, a sugar cane farmer, was getting ready to go and harvest four tonnes of cane to be loaded on the trucks for the CSR company's mills at Lautoka. Harvesting began early in the morning, before it got hot and then the hornets stung viciously. Besides, in the coolness of the tropical morning one could do much more work and when the sun rose across the sky, like the white overseer across the canefields, burning blindly, it was impossible to do much. So Shiva, began early every day, seven days a week. Life on the farm had a ritualistic monotony. His father had done it for fifty years for the CSR company, the mother of all labourers. Indeed it was the government as well. The old man was bent by the work but not broken in faith. Indeed his spirit had strengthened like a ploughshare in the fire. And he was proud of his son, the owner now of ten acres of native land. It was

his farm and it was larger than his parents would have ever got from their zamindar in their distant village. Every morning, for six months of the harvesting season, Shiva would get up around 4 am, rush to the well, perform his ablutions, never turning his back towards the rising sun, washed his face with warm water from the well and return noiselessly to his tin shed. His wife, Rampati, would have packed a dozen roti, at least two curries, several chillies, and a bowl of dahl, yoghurt, into a large, enamel sispaan. He loved the parathas, dripping with home-made ghee and the dark massala of the curries with a handful of mango pickles. The sispaan would then be kept near the cane knife with a large bowl of red tea. Rampati would then lie down alone, in her lahnga, on the timber bed staring at the corrugated iron ceiling while her husband got himself ready to be one of the finest cane cutters of the district. Around 5 am he'd leave his home, the little rugged track leading to the feeder road below the hill; he'd walk briskly with the sispaan in one hand and the caneknife in the other. As he reached the field, Sultan Ali would give him his 'taas': rows and rows of the sturdy green sugar-cane to be mowed down. Sultan, Shiva knew, had one weakness: he was a recent convert from another district and to show him respect, Shiva would greet him warmly: "Salaam walukum, hatmaan!' Sultan would mumble something unintelligible, almost inaudible. The greeting didn't come naturally to his tongue used to "Ram Ram, Sita Ram". And the short plastic Sultan had begun claiming his ancestry from the Pathans. But it ensured Shiva the best patch to harvest. Then around 6am Sardar Ramasami, a rather dark nagonchi, would arrive accompanied by a redfaced nagonchi, Mr Reid, the coolumber. Reid Sahib never got off his horse but bellowed a few instructions as his well-groomed brown horse trotted between the two rows of harvested cane. As he paused, the cane-cutters would lift their sweaty felt hats and shout "Salaam!". The Australian overseer would look well pleased as the men resumed their harvesting while Ramasami took the coolumber to his home for breakfast of goat curry, mango chutney and paraathas. Before the meal a basin full of freshly squeezed yaqona was consumed. But men and boughs break.... The old man looked up the mango tree loaded with half ripened mangoes. A local tree planted by his wife Anarkali soon after Shiva was born. The mango tree had become such a symbol of this bountiful land. The sun had not yet emerged from behind the Sabeto hills; a few hens were scratching the yard for early worms; Kallu lay dozing in the warmth of another dawn. He heard his son draw the bucket of water from the well and gargle, getting rid of last night's yaqona poison. And then he knew Shiva would stand erect and breathe 'oum' fifty six times: it was the holy mantra, but the real reason was that it brought up the stale wind from his innards. It was refreshing. The strong, young man came up from the well, the old man mumbled gently, "Arre, Shiunanan, my beard's grown bigger". Shiva was surprised to see his old father sitting under the mango tree, a wraith in half light. "Bappa, kal tomorrow. Cutting five tonnes today. Getting extra truck." Why the old man had never learnt to shave was a mystery to him and initially he felt irritated whenever he had to shave his father. But slowly, shaving his father's face began to give him a certain closeness. To lather his white rubble of a beard with a carbolic soap, to use slightly warm water, then to turn and twist the old man's head, gave him a joyous sensation. Father and son, sitting together for a while, had

acquired a special, indefinable meaning for him. He had looked into his father's eyes, touched his wrinkled skin. The old man sat quietly, a stubborn streak rising within him. "You promised last week, Shivnanan," he reminded him and coughed fondly. His son went into the tin kitchen and came out with his sispaan, knife and the bowl of red tea. He sat on the three steps that connected his house to the ground. With the first loud sip of steaming tea, he glanced at his father's grizzled beard growing like a sugar-cane ratoon. He got up, walked to the old man and said, "Acha, Bappa, shave you first." The old man smiled, a toothless grin. Kallu stirred half asleep. The sun's warm rays broke over the hills and slanted into the mango leaves: it was always so golden, so beautiful: how could people not worship it. There was no monotony ever in the dawn breaking over blue hills and green fields. The old man bowed his head naturally and muttered: Oum Tat Sat - Thou Art That. And as his son went back into his tin house to get the shaving paraphernalia, the old man remembered how Hanumaan, so the legend went, was so hungry one morning that his mother had scolded him to go and eat the first fruit he saw. And he had seen the rising sun, red and golden, a pomegranate perhaps, and had swallowed it. There was darkness everywhere. Only his mother's pleadings had made him release the sun. The story always amused the old man: hunger of children can be so strong and his eyes twitched every time he remembered his own hungry days. Shiva brought a bowl of warm water, a piece of carbolic soap, a Gillette machine, an empty glass and two rather rusty looking bluish blades. He also clasped tightly in his left hand a jagged piece from a broken mirror. He sat on the ground and asked his father to come and sit opposite him, warning him not to plunge his buttocks on the broken piece of glass. The old man got off the wooden bench-like structure, moved a few paces and sat near his son, as if he was sitting at some important ceremony. He sat still, watching the movements of his son with deep fascination. Shivnanan put a bit of spit in the glass and began rubbing one of the blades against the smooth wide edge of the tumbler. After about five minutes of intense rubbing, like Aladdin's lamp, the blade glinted in the dawn. He fitted the blade into the small silver machine. Then with his right hand he wetted the old man's wizened face and rubbed soap all over it. "Sit still, Bappa, or the soap will go into your eyes!" he scolded his old father whenever the old man blinked. Soon his face was covered in a thick lather: his large nostrils blocked by white foam. His son's nostrils were slightly flared too. "Wokay, sitting still, Bappa," warned his son, holding the shaving machine close to the old man's left cheek. "Me sitting not running!" the old man retaliated, emboldened by his son's closeness. Shivananan placed the broken mirror against a stone to reflect the old man's half

Those good old days

By SHEETAL SINGH Tuesday, May 19, 2009

THE two major races in the country were more isolated from each other in the girmit era than today, says University of Fiji lecturer on Fijian studies Rejieli Racule. Speaking at a book launch on Girmit Day celebrations at the university on Friday, Ms Racule said before European contact, Fiji was relatively homogeneous with a young civilisation. The university marked Girmit Day on Friday with the launch of Shifting Locations by Professor Subramani and Between the Lines by Professor Satendra Nandan. In her speech, Ms Racule said when she was doing her research on the girmitya for her speech, she met a 100-year-old girmit descendant in Lautoka. "Muniamma was born at Nakaikogo in Nausori to girmit parents who were married here in Fiji and lived a hard life," she told guests in Lautoka. "Her first contact with Fijians was when she was eight years old when they moved to Drasa. Some Fijian girls made friends with her and used to take her swimming, which she greatly enjoyed and later on she developed a liking for yaqona that she still likes to drink." Presenting a Fijian perspective to the girmit era, Ms Racule said there were hardly any publication made giving a Fijian's account of the girmit. She said there was now a fair body of literature on the effects of the indentured system on the girmit and their descendants. "By contrast, hardly any writing, study or research has been done on the effect of the Indian civilisation and culture on the Fijian people, from first contact to now," said Ms Racule.

A generation of exiles
Sunday, September 09, 2007 Last Sunday was Father's Day. It was, therefore, particularly poignant to see on the front page of The Fiji Times Laisenai Qarase being received by his favourite granddaughter. One of the joys of an ageing life is to see your grandchildren play in the dust of your childhood, on the streets of your youth, or under the mango tree in your village, or swim in the same river, fish in the same lagoon. Many fathers and grandfathers in Fiji won't have their sons and daughters visiting them with loving gratitude and gifts. Because so many children born in Fiji, of Fiji, have left the shores of our island childhood in search of other homes, in other places. Now they reside in another country, another city, another street. Creating a new home, with tears of old things and memories, is never easy. The sense of loss is often heartrending. To think and imagine that such a fate has befallen so many in Fiji, in the past two decades, is deeply saddening. These are not expatriates or emigrs who migrate out of choice. These are men and women who have been forced out by dispossession, disenfranchisement, and discrimination by a handful of our racialist compatriots who masquerade as nationalists. Racism is the core of their mean creed. They have created a generation of exiles in Fiji. At the time of our independence, Fiji didn't have a single political prisoner. Since then we've had Prime Ministers treated like prisoners and prisoners who want to be Prime Ministers.

That it has happened in Fiji with monotonous regularity is our shared sorrow and public shame. Mr Qarase's exile, self-imposed or enforced, has come full circle. To many it will bring memories of Mahendra Chaudhry's bearded picture with his grandchild after 56 days of trauma and torture in the Parliamentary complex the very symbol of our freedom and security. At least Mr Qarase's Bula shirt is shining in its colours. But both are reminders of what we do to one another in the name of petty power and racism. If an elected Fiji-Indian' cannot be the Prime Minister of Fiji, there is no guarantee that a Fijian' will remain so for long. How often, in recent times, the many citizens of Fiji have felt exiled in their own homeland. To be marooned on your own island is a fate worse than being on Nukulau Island. It is easy to repair a broken bridge; but very difficult to rebuild broken lives. To be rooted in a place is perhaps the most vital need of the human soul, formed by the smell of the soil, the salt of the sea, the colours of the sky. Exile, however, is part of the human condition. The great epics of many civilisations give us some idea of human exile. If Rama had not been banished from his kingdom on the eve of his coronation, we wouldn't be celebrating Diwali next month. The gifts of exile are manifold: it may make us more contemplative; it may teach us to understand and share the sorrows of others; it may give us humility. It may create in us a longing for a better life. If man (and woman) had not been exiled from Eden, would we be longing for paradise? Would our priests and preachers have such a field day on our streets, thinking of their profits and your loss? So much of the world's literature and scriptures have been created in exile, by exiles. They give us a special edge of awareness of our human condition, as if once you are exiled from your mother's womb, the journey towards homelessness begins in search of a home but you'll never be that close to anyone or anything again. The tomb is our last hope. But exile's deepest gift is the creation of a moral law it is really about means and ends. It is when one is in exile that one may consider the means one adopted to gain power, or profit. How one wounded and divided society itself. What methods and persons one used in pursuit of power without glory. As Gandhi remarked: The means may be likened to a seed. The end to a tree. And there's just the same inviolable connection between the means and ends as there's between the seed and the tree. Or, as the New Testament puts it: Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Exile is easy to write and read about but terrible to experience. Its crippling sorrow can never be transcended. Only through creative acts the exilic energy can be harnessed to create new ways of living and thinking and transforming. Perhaps in Fiji, where coups made so many feel homeless in their homes, a new sense of a nationhood may emerge. Exile, then, is not a terminal loss.

In times of anxiety and alienation, the unanchored souls, the unaccommodated men and women reach out to the best in them, to shape their present and future. This is one immeasurable gift all our ancestors have left for all of us, the resilience of the human heart: Thanks to the human heart by which we live. Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and its fears; To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. Is it part of Fiji's political morality to make the islands a place of exile for so many of its citizens? If the present condition brings an end to this feeling of amputation from a native place, to stop this internal haemorrhage, it will be a price worth paying by our generation for future generations. Just as the past generations paid a price for us to be here. A sense of exile may yet make us a bit more sensible. Satendra Nandan is Foundation Professor and Dean of the School of Humanities and Arts, and Head, Department of Language, Literature and Communication at the University of Fiji. His latest book The Loneliness of Islands was launched on Girmit Day, 2007.

Writers and poets remember girmitya

TIMOTHY NAIVALUWAQA Friday, May 16, 2008 ASPIRING writers and poets were urged not to dwell on the past but look to the future during a ceremony to remember Fiji's girmitya yesterday. The ceremony at the University of Fiji in Lautoka brought together a host of local writers and poets in commemoration of the contribution made by girmitya who arrived in Fiji under the indentured labour system. Writers such as Jogindar Singh Kanwal and Professor Satendra Nandan read poems and scripts that portrayed the hardships and contribution of the girmitya. A few writers and university students also got the opportunity to expose their talent as they read poems reflecting their views and opinions on the indentured system and period of the girmitya. University vice-chancellor Professor Rajesh Chandra challenged those who attended the function to move away from the common attitude and perception of the indentured period. He said people should not be caught up by dwelling on the past and instead reflect on the period and decide on how they would move forward in the future. He said even though the girmitya contributed a lot to the economic development of Fiji, the contribution of indigenous Fijians also had to be recognised.

He said many girmitya chose to stay back and make a life in Fiji because of the hospitable society in the country. He said the indigenous Fijians willingly shared their resources with girmitya and this had to be acknowledged. Mr Kanwal who was chief guest and is the chairman of the multi-ethnic cultural centre in Ba, said the indentured period was a bleak time in Fiji's history. He said while countries such as Great Britain progressed significantly over the indentured period, those living in some countries under the empire struggled with extreme poverty. Mr Kanwal said extreme poverty was one of the reasons some people decided to travel to Fiji under the indenture system. He said while Fiji became the brightest jewel of Queen Victoria's crown, the reality for indentured Indians was of unrelenting hardship and oppression in the cane fields and sugar mills. However, he said despite suffering, the Indians still believed that better days would come. Mr Kanwal agreed that sometimes suffering, pain, suppression and persecution created unforgettable and classic literature.