Women in Anti-Colonial and Nationalist Movements: A Comparative Study of India and South Africa

Women have been at the forefront of global nationalist movements. In Latin America, Asia and Africa colonialism and its subjugation of men and women inevitably led to the rise of nationalistic fervour. In both South Africa and India women were at the forefront of the struggle challenging gender roles and creating new spaces for their political activism. This paper adopts a gender lens and engages in a comparative approach to document the role and contributions of women in the nationalist and anti-apartheid movement in India and South Africa respectively. It highlights the similarities and differences in terms of their mode of resistance, political agency and mobilisation. More significantly, it documents the challenges and constraints they endured in different geographical settings, in the context of gender, class, race/ethnicity and religion and how it shaped and defined their political activism and consciousness. This article contributes to narratives on gender and nationalism and how regional and continental histories shape and define women’s participation and opportunities.&nbsp

Mapping free Indian migration to Natal through a biographical lens, 1880-1930.

The history of indentured Indians has been well documented in South African historiography in terms of migration and settlement. Shipping lists, which meticulously recorded the biographical details of each labourer, together with Indian immigrant reports, provide a wealth of information on the early migratory and labour experiences of indentured Indians. Regrettably, similar documentation regarding passenger or free Indian migration to Natal is absent in the South African archival records. This article adopts a biographical approach as a methodological tool to map the identification practices involved in the migration of passenger or free Indian immigrants to Natal between 1880 and 1930. Both the colonial and Union governments sought to regulate the entry of these immigrants through a system of identity documents. Passage tickets, domicile certificates, affidavits, Certificates of Identity and passports not only facilitated and hindered both individual and family migration, but also show how citizenship was defined, and migration controls were instituted and administered to free immigrants. Thus, as British subjects, free Indian immigrants were not really free but had to constantly, defend and reclaim their civic rights, and attest and verify their identity as the colonial and later the Union government sought new and creative ways to restrict and prohibit their entry. This article illustrates the usefulness of a biographical approach to migration studies, in not only highlighting individual but collective immigrant experiences, which provide a way of capturing the diversity, complexity and the transformational nature of free Indian migration to Natal

Married to the Struggle: For better or worse Wives of Indian anti-apartheid activists in Natal: The untold narratives.

The role and contributions of women in war, and anti-colonial and nationalistic struggles have become the subject of intense research and analysis over the past two decades. In South Africa, the nationalistic struggle against the apartheid regime was a collective effort by men and women. Yet, to a very large extent, anti-apartheid discourses are male centred, focusing on well-known heroes of the struggle, their life in exile and their contributions. Women’s activism is still at the periphery of nationalistic discourses; the impact of the struggle on the wives of political activists is even less visible. This article examines the daily survival and experiences of the wives of political activists in the anti-apartheid struggle who resided in Natal between the 1950s and 1980s, at the height of the anti-apartheid movement. Wives bore the heaviest burdens of the struggle, in the context of social ostracism, depression, stigmatisation, financial hardships, and violations of their human rights and coping with an “absentee husband”. In this article I argue that the perennial absence of their spouses from the home and women’s lives had multiple effects on families, and that family dynamics and gender relations were negotiated and re-structured. Regional socio-economic and political conditions shaped women’s personal and political identities. New theoretical frameworks emerging from this article will add to the regional histories of the nationalistic movement in South Africa in the context of gender roles and family dynamics

"Daughters of Gujarat in the diaspora": Immigrant women, identity and agency in Natal

Through  the  narrative  genre  the  author  examines  issues  of  identity  and  agency  amongst  15  Gujarati  Hindu  immigrant  women  who  arrived  in  Natal  (South  Africa)  between  1943  and  1953.  The  aims  of  this article are three-fold: Firstly, through the narratives the author seeks to highlight the many socio-economic  challenges  that  immigrant  Indian  women  faced  in  the  diaspora.  Secondly,  issues  of  identity  are  examined  in  the  context  of  “home”  and  “belonging”.  While  the  author  argues  that  Gujarat,  their  place  of  birth,  is  no  longer  perceived  as  their  “homeland”,  it  plays  an  important  role  in  constructing  immigrant women’s ethnic identity. Thirdly, the article explores notions of agency and argues that given their personal, economic and social circumstances, Gujarati Hindu women were able to negotiate new roles  for  themselves  within  the  household.  Migration  generated  new  challenges  within  the  traditional  household which resulted in some women exercising more agency than others. By examining notions of agency, this article seeks to dispel the myth of “passive”, “docile” Indian women, devoid of autonomy in  their  lives.  It  hopes  to  add  to  the  current  theoretical  debates  on  immigrant  women,  agency  and  identity with reference to Gujarati speaking Hindu women in South Africa, a relatively unexplored area of research

JOSEPH DEVASAYAGEM ROYEPPEN (1871-1960): THE ANGLICAN, COLONIAL BORN POLITICAL ACTIVIST

This article documents the contributions of Joseph Royeppen, a colonial born Christian activist in South Africa at the turn of the century. Royeppen was a barrister, passive resister and a devout Christian. He was the first colonial born Indian to study law at Cambridge and played an important role in mobilising support for Indian grievances whilst in England. He participated in the first satyagraha campaign in South Africa and endured imprisonment. Yet in the vast corpus of historical literature on South Africans of Indian descent he is given minimal recognition. This paper seeks to rectify this omission by documenting his contributions to the first satyagraha campaign that occurred in the Transvaal between 1907-1911. Royeppen, in his fight against oppression and inequality, embraced multiple roles: an eloquent student, barrister, devout Christian, hawker, passive resister and labourer. He mediated among these varying roles and in the process highlighted not only strength in character but dignity in protest action. A colonial born Indian, he was highly critical of the colonial and British governments and challenged their attempts to deny citizenship rights to South Africans of Indian descent. Joseph Royeppen’s narrative is significant because it highlights the role and contributions of colonial born Indians, in particular the educated elite, to the early political struggles in South Africa. In many ways, they were an important, influential and active constituency in South Africa’s road to democracy

Post-Emancipation Indenture and Migration: Identities, Racialization and Transnationalism

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