Colonialism was NEVER A PASSIVE ACT. 
GANDHI IS A COLONISER.
(2) A disturbing element of the 1920 strike was Europe’s colonial agenda and India’s Brahminical supremacy, both of which inflicted violence on the Girmitiyas. This is where British colonialism, Brahmanism and Indo-Fijian patriarchy intersect.
(3) #Gandhi was, at the same time, in South Africa trying to get women to join his Satyagraha Campaign. A key woman that joined him was Jayakunvar Manilal, who was married to Indian lawyer, Manilal Maganlal. Infamously referred to as the Manilals, they were upper-caste
(4) Gujaratis from India, who aligned well with Gandhi’s skewed morality and politics. They were all complicit in introducing and promoting Hindu nationalism across different colonies, as well as forcefully deepening Hindutva politics and values among the Girmitiyas in Fiji.
(5) To be clear, Gandhi’s activism and colonial resistance tactics weren’t going to save us. Gandhi was and still is a violent, racist and predatory figure in history. His agenda, disguised as colonial resistance, was to only strengthen and glorify Hindu nationalist ideas around
(6) freedom, which benefited other caste and class-privileged Indians like himself. He had no understanding of what it meant to be a labourer of Girmit. And neither did the Manilals. Gandhi’s passive resistance serves privileged and oppressor caste/class Indians,
(7) and their respectability. Passive resistance disregarded the real life violence that our ancestors experienced, and labels our reactions to violence as useless, unproductive and not valuable. The labelling of Girmit anger, which was apart of our survivalism, has led to
(8) generational shaming of Indo-Fijians and especially female descendants. As the militant acts of resistance were led by female #Girmitiya, it stood in opposition to the Brahminical notions of femininity and morality aka the Sita-goddess archetype. Passivity was never
(9) afforded to us in the plantations, violence and abuse were daily acts and when we took it upon ourselves to liberate our communities, the Indian state colluded with the British Empire to purify us. Gandhi was apart of this colonial project of cleaning up the #Girmit history.
