Indian Problem In
p. 48 · Read in the full issue
Fiji
Abuse and Epithets Will Not Provide Solution
BECAUSE, in recent issues, we published letters written by Fiji Indians, in which the latter gentlemen defended their rights to residence in Fiji, we have re ceived abusive communications from resi dents of Fiji. We are told that the “Pacific Islands Monthly’’ “seems to have got the Governor’s disease!” We are told also that “any more Indian publicity will spoil the well-earned reputation for fair dealing which your paper has won.”
One writer says that one of our Indian correspondents “is typical of the rising generation of cheeky swine we have to deal with—by publishing his letter you have made him the happiest mongrel in Fiji.”
Such communications get us nowhere — and they indicate a condition of mind among Fiji residents which certainly. does not assist in the solution of one of the most delicate problems in the South Seas.
The frank opinion of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” is that when the British authori ties, in conjunction with the sugar in terests, brought the Indian people to Fiji and allowed them to settle there they com mitted one of the worst racial sins in the history of South Seas colonisation. It is inevitable that this established Asiatic population will overwhelm and push out the indigenous Fijians—just as the Chinese are pushing the Tahitians out of Tahiti and the Japanese are overwhelming the native Hawaiians.
It was to be expected that a rich country
like Fiji should be colonised by overseas people. But the ideal arrangement would have been colonisation by Europeans, who would have protected the fundamental rights of the Fijians to their own country.
The native Fijians are of a type which does not provide suitable labour for developmental enterprises and therefore probably it would have been necessary to bring in Asiatic labourers. Labourers under such conditions have been taken by the French into New Caledonia and the New Hebrides —but under a strict system of indenture by which permanent settle ment is forbidden. That was the system followed in Fiji in the beginning—the Indians were brought in under indenture and sent away again at the end of their term.
The crime was committed when per manent Indian settlement was permitted in Fiji. The mistake is recognised now— but it is too late. There is in Fiji a per manent Indian settlement of about 80,000 people which is rapidly increasing. The great bulk of these people are quiet, harm less toilers of the soil; but a growing pro portion are demanding political and social equality with the whites. That agitation is going to grow—and Heaven alone knows where the Fiji authorities will look for the ultimate solution of the problem. If some thing is not done it is as certain as the sunrise that these Asiatic people will naturally take possession of the entire country.
It is no use calling the Indians “cheeky swine and mongrels.’’ There is no remedy for the mistake that has been made in oppressing or imposing injustices upon individual Indians or upon the Fiji Indians as a class. They live under the British flag as British citizens, and are fully en titled to the freedom and privileges which that flag confers. They are not themselves
responsible for the racial problem.
These, no doubt, are the considerations which weigh with the present Governor of Fiji, who is a man of broad vision, faced with a most difficult racial situation, for which he is no more responsible person ally than are the Indians themselves. Fiji residents will get nowhere by simply abus ing the Governor and the Indians.