Free Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents by Minal Hajratwala Page B
Authors: Minal Hajratwala
bought a portion of the now-cheap marshland, reclaimed the swamps, and erected a mosque in 1881. By Ganda's time, the cobblestone streets around the mosque were the city's main hub of Indian social and commercial activity.
But Grey Street was more than a colorful clustering of an ethnic minority. It was also a product of the Indian "problem" and white South Africa's response to it—a ghetto enforced by law.
Beginning in 1885, the first Gujaratis in Durban had set up shop several blocks away, in the city's main commercial district, on West Street. A steady stream of other Indians, both former indentured workers and new Gujarati "passengers," had followed suit.
This set off a small panic among the white merchants downtown, who did not want to have their shops next to "coolies"—or to compete with their cheaper prices. All over the colony, a similar pattern was developing in the towns as Indians set up small stores wherever they could buy or rent space.
Many of these first Gujaratis were Muslims who, in an effort to distinguish themselves from the poor Hindu masses and fall to the whiter side of the rigid racial line, styled themselves "Arabs." But the whites knew a "coolie" when they saw one. Variously the traders were also called Bombay-wallahs, Banias (for the Hindu merchant caste), and, in the unforgettable phrase of Natal's governor, "black matter in the wrong place." Like most of his subjects, the governor would have liked to keep out passenger Indians altogether—though he was still importing three thousand indentured Indians a year, at the request of Natal's sugar planters, rail companies, and coal mines.
Indian shopkeepers, it was widely held, undercut "legitimate" businesses. At rallies and town-hall meetings throughout Natal, the complaint rose: Indians kept their stores open on Sundays, when good Christians must rest. They worked late into the nights, when family men should be with their wives and children. They had minimal requirements of clothing, food, and luxury, subsisting "on the smell of an oil rag," their white competitors complained. How could a white man raise his family if he must match these conditions?
In 1897, the Natal colony gave its town councils the power to deny trade licenses to anyone, with minimal cause and no right of appeal. Neutral in language, the law was aimed at and deployed against Indians.
Some towns used their new powers to expel all of their Indian shopkeepers. In Durban, the town council was content to drive Indians out of long-established business locations downtown, on specious charges of sanitation or bookkeeping irregularities. By 1908, the licensing bureau was proud to report, Durban had succeeded in cutting back the number of Indian licenses by a third. Virtually all remaining businesses were in the Grey Street area.
For Ganda, eleven years old, it would have been easy enough to disappear into the ghetto. An uncle and cousins lived in the neighborhood, and they must have taken him in. They would have known that, sooner or later, he would need an official identity: he could be stopped on the street at any time and asked to show his documents; he could be arrested for breaking the 9 P.M. curfew or walking on a sidewalk reserved for whites; he could be deported.
So his relatives—being, after all, wily Asiatics—hatched a scheme.
In Johannesburg, cousin Chhiba reported to the police that his son had gone missing. He gave a description, a name. Perhaps he said that the boy might have run away, to Durban.
Meanwhile, in Durban, Ganda filed for his identity papers. He had no birth certificate, but that was not unusual. He gave his "father's" name, Chhiba of Johannesburg.
As for his last name, the uncles and cousins used "Kapitan." Most rural Indians never use a surname until they encounter a Western authority, and so it was with Ganda's predecessors, who had to invent one upon landing in South Africa. Kapitan is a unique choice among our people, and the stories of its
But Grey Street was more than a colorful clustering of an ethnic minority. It was also a product of the Indian "problem" and white South Africa's response to it—a ghetto enforced by law.
Beginning in 1885, the first Gujaratis in Durban had set up shop several blocks away, in the city's main commercial district, on West Street. A steady stream of other Indians, both former indentured workers and new Gujarati "passengers," had followed suit.
This set off a small panic among the white merchants downtown, who did not want to have their shops next to "coolies"—or to compete with their cheaper prices. All over the colony, a similar pattern was developing in the towns as Indians set up small stores wherever they could buy or rent space.
Many of these first Gujaratis were Muslims who, in an effort to distinguish themselves from the poor Hindu masses and fall to the whiter side of the rigid racial line, styled themselves "Arabs." But the whites knew a "coolie" when they saw one. Variously the traders were also called Bombay-wallahs, Banias (for the Hindu merchant caste), and, in the unforgettable phrase of Natal's governor, "black matter in the wrong place." Like most of his subjects, the governor would have liked to keep out passenger Indians altogether—though he was still importing three thousand indentured Indians a year, at the request of Natal's sugar planters, rail companies, and coal mines.
Indian shopkeepers, it was widely held, undercut "legitimate" businesses. At rallies and town-hall meetings throughout Natal, the complaint rose: Indians kept their stores open on Sundays, when good Christians must rest. They worked late into the nights, when family men should be with their wives and children. They had minimal requirements of clothing, food, and luxury, subsisting "on the smell of an oil rag," their white competitors complained. How could a white man raise his family if he must match these conditions?
In 1897, the Natal colony gave its town councils the power to deny trade licenses to anyone, with minimal cause and no right of appeal. Neutral in language, the law was aimed at and deployed against Indians.
Some towns used their new powers to expel all of their Indian shopkeepers. In Durban, the town council was content to drive Indians out of long-established business locations downtown, on specious charges of sanitation or bookkeeping irregularities. By 1908, the licensing bureau was proud to report, Durban had succeeded in cutting back the number of Indian licenses by a third. Virtually all remaining businesses were in the Grey Street area.
For Ganda, eleven years old, it would have been easy enough to disappear into the ghetto. An uncle and cousins lived in the neighborhood, and they must have taken him in. They would have known that, sooner or later, he would need an official identity: he could be stopped on the street at any time and asked to show his documents; he could be arrested for breaking the 9 P.M. curfew or walking on a sidewalk reserved for whites; he could be deported.
So his relatives—being, after all, wily Asiatics—hatched a scheme.
In Johannesburg, cousin Chhiba reported to the police that his son had gone missing. He gave a description, a name. Perhaps he said that the boy might have run away, to Durban.
Meanwhile, in Durban, Ganda filed for his identity papers. He had no birth certificate, but that was not unusual. He gave his "father's" name, Chhiba of Johannesburg.
As for his last name, the uncles and cousins used "Kapitan." Most rural Indians never use a surname until they encounter a Western authority, and so it was with Ganda's predecessors, who had to invent one upon landing in South Africa. Kapitan is a unique choice among our people, and the stories of its
Similar Books
After
Marita Golden
The Star King
Susan Grant
ISOF
Pete Townsend
Rockalicious
Alexandra V
Tropic of Capricorn
Henry Miller
The Whiskey Tide
M. Ruth Myers
Things We Never Say
Sheila O'Flanagan
Just One Spark
Jenna Bayley-Burke
Island of Silence (Unwanteds)
Lisa McMann
The Venice Code
J Robert Kennedy