BACK STORY
New Zealand’s Indian community could not have achieved its permanence, distinct identity and successes without the courageous Indian women who travelled thousands of miles from their homes in India to settle in the South Pacific. The stories in this book are mainly those of Indian women who arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand from the 1940s. Before then, few pioneer women made the journey to our shores. This chapter traces Indian women’s pioneering endeavours and challenges and places this within the long history of the Indian diaspora in New Zealand.
Until the early twentieth century, almost all Indians who ventured to New Zealand were men and even by the mid-twentieth century the number of Indian women in New Zealand was small. Todd Nachowitz has traced how Indian lascars were on the first European voyages of exploration dating from 1769, and on subsequent trading, sealing and timber ships. By the early nineteenth century a few Indians lived with Māori communities and fathered children. Nineteenth century census and newspaper records reveal the presence of small numbers of Indian visitors and workers in New Zealand. A tiny number may have been Indian women, such as Narain from Bengal. Recently married and with a baby son, she arrived in Canterbury in 1859 with her husband, Somen (John Sohman). The family and Somen’s cousin’s husband Bussawun, and his family, worked as indentured labourers on John Cracroft-Wilson’s estate. Tragically, a year after her arrival Narain died after swallowing poisonous tutu leaves. Somen married a young Indian pioneer (Bussawun’s 16-year-old daughter Sukhia) converted to Christianity and raised a large family but their descendants married Māori and Pākehā. By 1916, the census recorded 14 women out of 181 Indians in New Zealand. One of these women was Daya Kaur Singh.
From Punjab’s plains to the West Coast Rainforests
Daya Kaur Singh, one of the first pioneer Indian women in New Zealand, made this remarkable journey. In 1907 she left Ludhiana District in Punjab to sail to New Zealand with her husband, Ganda Singh, who had previously settled in New Zealand around 1899. The couple arrived with their newly born nephew Kehar Singh (Kaira). The year after leaving Punjab, Daya Kaur gave birth to Varyam Singh (Vram) in Whanganui. Her husband worked for pioneer Phuman Singh Gill, in his confectionery business but after some years Ganda Singh decided to seek new opportunities with his family on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Daya Kaur would spend most of her years in New Zealand living in the railway and coal mining community at Runanga where Ganda Singh was employed by the Liverpool State Mine at Rewanui, working for the railway that serviced the mine. Daya Kaur adapted to a lifestyle radically different from her life in India. Initially the family lived in a camp, within a tiny canvas-roofed shack, surrounded by dense rainforest and mountains. It could be extremely wet, muddy and cold for much of the year. Living conditions improved after Ganga Singh built a small cottage in Runanga. This became the family home for many years and a daughter, Tej Kaur, was born in 1913. The family farmed cows and sold milk to neighbours and were accepted into this isolated and tight-knit community. They wore European clothes, and Daya Kaur became known as Nellie, Ganda Singh as Jim and Tej Kaur as Annie. Kaira thrived at the local school, but in 1922 Daya Kaur insisted that the family return to the Punjab. Daya Kaur’s story also reminds us of women’s active role in the migration process, including decisions over remaining in New Zealand. Many years later, another Indian female migrant took a proactive role in her migration process. This was Ruxmaniben Kasanji who arrived in Wellington as a 17-year-old wife in 1948. She had accepted the norm of an arranged marriage but had chosen her destination, rejecting marriage prospects in South Africa because of the discrimination against Indians there.
Gendered migration patterns: Restraints and Preferences
At the time of Daya Kaur’s departure from New Zealand, only 19 women had been recorded among the 671 Indians in the 1921 census and only a handful of Indian women migrated to New Zealand before World War II. Information about these pioneers is sketchy but most were from Gujarat and Punjab. These were the origins of most Indian families that settled in New Zealand before the 1980s and today span several generations. The majority of the Punjabi settlers came from villages in Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur Districts. Gujarati pioneers came from small clusters of villages in present-day Navsari and Bardoli Districts and the former states of Baroda and Sachin. Punjabis were entering New Zealand during the nineteenth century and Gujarati males started to arrive during the early twentieth century. By then overseas migration was well established within the Punjab and Gujarat to destinations in South Africa, Australia, North America and increasingly to New Zealand, Fiji and East Africa. Economic and social pressures were behind this movement. The migrants were mainly agricultural labourers or small landowners, but some were from artisan castes.
New Zealand became a migration destination for Indians during the early twentieth century, not only because of work opportunities in the developing nation but also because until 1920 immigration requirements there were relatively relaxed in comparison to other destinations. However moves to restrict Indian immigration into New Zealand date back to the early 1890s, a period that also revealed an underbelly of prejudice against Indians in New Zealand. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1899 imposed an English test on prospective immigrants (other than those of British or Irish birth and parentage). This test was relatively easy to circumvent and the numbers of Indian immigrants to New Zealand increased. After World War I, racism against Indians mounted and government introduced legislation to stem further immigration of ‘undesirables’, especially Indians.
The 1920 Immigration Restriction Amendment Act shaped the future of Indian settlement until 1987. A permit system was introduced for any prospective migrant not of British birth and parentage. The Act had marked implications for the gendered composition of New Zealand’s Indian community. Indians had special provision under the 1920 Act, to allow dependants to join the Indian men who had settled in New Zealand before 1920. The only new Indian migrants who could legally enter New Zealand (other than visitors, students or under special categories such as a scheme for Anglo-Indian orphans) were Indian women joining their husbands or fiancés or children aged under 21 to be reunited with their fathers. Gujarati women began to settle in New Zealand during the 1920s. Divaliben, the wife of Govind Daji, and Dudhiben were the first two Gujarati women to settle in New Zealand. Dudhiben went to Marton where her husband Wallabhbhai Soma Moral operated a successful fruit business. Within three years, she had given birth to three children. The family returned to Karadi in 1929, but sadly, soon after, Dudhiben died. Bai Bibi was aged 17 when she arrived in Auckland as Ibrahim Joseph Musa’s wife. She settled on Matakana Island near Tauranga where her husband operated two stores. In 1938, she gave birth to Mohamed, the first Muslim Gujarati to be born in New Zealand. She had another son the following year and would give birth to nine children and care for Ibrahim’s two sons from a former marriage. Indian women also settled in Rotorua during this period when Jamnaben and her two young daughters accompanied Jamnaben’s husband Wallabhbhai Bhana to Rotorua in 1937. Maniben Bava, whose story features in this book, was the first Indian woman to settle in Pukekohe in 1936.
By 1945, there were still only 194 Indian women in New Zealand out of a population of 1,554 Indians. Why were there still so few Indian women in New Zealand, despite the 1920 Immigration Act, which appeared to favour the emigration of Indian wives and children? Clearly, gendered preferences and cultural patterns within Indian culture were crucial to this male bias in migration. The Indian migrants in New Zealand during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often sojourners who did not intend to put down roots. They had migrated in search of work and to accumulate money, expecting to return to their wives and children in their home villages. However this soon changed and the male migrants did settle in New Zealand, establishing small businesses and in time, acquiring property. After several years they visited their families in India but returned to their work and lives in New Zealand.
Indian communities in New Zealand also did not encourage female migration when men worked in remote areas and were employed in itinerant occupations, like hawking goods and scrub cutting. Two exceptions were Gina Singh, a member of a scrub cutting gang at Pongoroa in Hawkes Bay, who in 1926 had his wife, Karam Kaur, with him, and Joala Singh Belling whose wife, Nasib Kaur, accompanied him when he cut scrub west of Taihape in 1936. Generally however, temporary accommodation in huts, tents, bunkhouses or boarding houses was considered unsuitable for a family.
Families were also anxious about their daughters’ marriage prospects if they joined their fathers in New Zealand. When the Indian community in New Zealand was small, families were reluctant to bring young women to New Zealand because of the difficulties in finding a suitable marriage partner there. This was another reason why many Indian families were reluctant to settle in New Zealand. Until 1958 immigration policy discriminated against New Zealand-born Indian women by preventing them marrying their fiancés within New Zealand. The marriage had to take place outside New Zealand but the husbands (except under exceptional circumstances) had no right of entry to New Zealand.
After World War II, immigration policy facilitated the migration of Indian wives and children. In 1951, Asian residents who temporarily left New Zealand were granted a re-entry immigration permit valid for only 18 months. This was ostensibly to encourage family migration. Government also had an assimilationist policy and wanted young Asians to be educated in New Zealand. There was also objection to the drain on overseas funds when immigrants were supporting kin overseas. Four-year immigration re-entry permits were re-introduced in 1957 but government insisted that mothers accompany sons aged under 15 years who were joining their fathers in New Zealand.
Challenges Of Settlement: Gumboots And Saris
All Indian women faced difficulties, different from those of men, when settling in New Zealand. Many of these experiences were similar to those of other migrant women, and their Māori and Pākehā sisters in New Zealand, but there were specific pressures for Indian women pioneers.
Several Indian women began the biggest transition in their lives, that is, living with their husband, at the same time as they also had to settle in to the strange New Zealand environment. Others had to rekindle family and personal relationships. Couples may have never co-habited while others were newly wed. Domestic arrangements in New Zealand could be radically different from those in India where the bride normally lived with her husband’s extended family. In New Zealand, she might be living only with her husband or the couple might be sharing a household with other men. The early Indian women settlers in New Zealand did not live with senior females. This offered independence and alleviated tensions with ‘in-laws’ but it could also deprive Indian women of support from older women who shared their culture. Increasingly, after World War II, family groups arrived in New Zealand that consisted of women with established marriages and children. Due to the separation of migration, several married couples had not seen each other for many years, while some children had no recollection of their fathers.
This chapter opened with the dramatic transition Daya Kaur made in settling on the West Coast. The establishment of both familiar and new domestic routines within strange environments were challenges all pioneer women faced. A young mother who arrived in Mamaku near Rotorua around 1950 accused her husband of bringing her to a jungle. Shantiben arrived in Dannevirke as a young bride in 1951 and like many Indian migrants found that the cold was the hardest thing to adjust to. She hung out the washing in gumboots because the ground was so wet.
Daya Kaur also lived in very basic accommodation when she first moved to the West Coast. Many other Indian pioneers also shared cramped and sometimes make-shift conditions. Nathiben Nagar had been married to her husband for two years when she sailed with him and four other Gujarati women to Wellington in 1937. Nathiben cared for three children in a small room within a house the family shared with other Indians. When Maniben Unka and her two young daughters settled in a rental house in Rotorua in 1951 they had to sleep on the floor and use washed potato sacks to keep out the cold. Maniben Bava’s story in this book recalls how she cared for eight children in a two-roomed house in Pukekohe during the early 1950s. There was no electricity, cooking was over an open fire and the children studied by candles and lamps. Water was brought to the house in buckets from a nearby supply.
Many Indian women pioneers in rural areas lived in not only remote areas but also experienced social isolation—equally a problem for Indian women living in cities. Ruxmaniben found living in a house in suburban Wellington house ‘a jail’, in marked contrast to the close interaction of village life. The loneliness for pioneer Indian women was compounded by their limited ability and confidence to understand, speak and write English. Few Indian girls from rural backgrounds were formally educated before World War II. Indian male migrants had the advantage of better education and in New Zealand had more interaction with non-Indians. Although Indian women worked in family businesses, this was often away from public contact, further impeding English language acquisition. Children often became the intermediaries in assisting their mothers to understand English and to negotiate public services. Tara Satyanand offered English classes for Indian women in Auckland after World War II. Tara came to New Zealand from Fiji in 1938, to train as a Karitane nurse and to marry Mutyala Satyanand.
Almost all the stories of Indian women in this book contain mouth-watering memories of food. Sourcing ingredients and preparing food was challenging but could also be rewarding. When Indian women joined the men, regional and religious dietary patterns could be more closely adhered to. Procuring appropriate and affordable ingredients could be frustrating but the challenge in preparing everyday and special meals was central to how the pioneer Indian women in New Zealand affirmed their roles and identity. Despite the challenges of climate and location many Indian women pioneers established family gardens and made chutneys and other Indian culinary products. They also learned from neighbours how to preserve fruit and make jam. Stories in this book testify to the inventive ways women sourced ingredients, adapted and sustained an Indian diet in New Zealand.
Conclusion
As Daya Kaur’s story showed, pioneer Indian women in New Zealand faced profound change and challenges. In fact this had begun for many of them before they left India when their fiancés, husbands, fathers and brothers had migrated so far away. The women did not know when they would see the men again and many women took up new responsibilities within their families and on the farms in India. The changes were far more profound once women themselves migrated but in New Zealand they often had very little social and spiritual support. A few women took to this as an adventure and welcomed the independence and new gender roles this offered them. Hardly any Indian women pioneers entered paid work, although their labour was crucial to the operation of family businesses and farms, as told in Karam Kaur’s story, in this book.
We know less about how Indian women pioneers in New Zealand practised their spiritual faith in those years when institutions, such as mandir, gurdwara or mosques were absent. Instead, daily expressions of belief were often sustained within the family home and through small daily routines. As the size of Indian communities increased in New Zealand after World War II, Indian women established informal and then more formal cultural networks such as Mahila Samaj. But Indian women pioneers were often extremely busy with family and work and very isolated from both other Indian women and other New Zealanders. Many Kiwis were not welcoming to Asians and there must have been moments of fear for these women living within a hostile physical and social environment. Yet Indian women also quietly forged interconnections with other women through everyday domestic activities and the kindness of strangers could make the difference for the transition in a new land, as well as lead to lifetime friendships, such as that of Laxmi Dullabh Jairam and Eve Young. A Māori family in Rotorua was supportive to Maniben Unka in Rotorua and although she spoke Gujarati, she learned new techniques such as cooking food in flax baskets in the boiling pools. Pioneer Indian women in Aotearoa New Zealand were crucial to not only the visible success of Indians in New Zealand but equally, and often privately, shaped its distinctive Kiwi Indian identity.
By Jacqueline Leckie
References: This chapter is based on Jacqueline Leckie, Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community, Dunedin, Otago University Press (2007), which contains detailed references and further reading. See also Jacqueline Leckie, “Gumboots and Saris: Engendering Indian Settlers’ History in Aotearoa”. In Asia in the Making of New Zealand, H. Johnson and B. Moloughney eds, Auckland University Press, Auckland (2006) pp. 76-93. Sincere thanks to Craig Giddens for information on the Sohman family and to the late Professor Hew McLeod for sharing information on Punjabi women pioneers.