HINDUS OF FIJI.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 258, 29 October 1921, Page 17

HINDUS OF FIJI.

COOLIE AND SOME CUSTOMS, (By TE I'AXA.) The lirilis'n Grown Colony of l'iji, through the immigration of Indians, is rapidly becoming a South Sea llindu state; the white man's creed is' being converted into a kind of pot pourri of Eastern, Southern and Western theology doing the can-can. It is becoming an island "glory hole" of Mohammcdisui.

And it is it jumping-ott place for Indians with eyes and minds an.l hearts set on the business channels in New Zealand. The writer lias had many years' experience in various groups of Pacific islands, and knows 'his ground.

The sugar cane fields stretch for miles across low. undulating land. The wisp of a breeze floats in from the sea ;ind tempers the heat of a blazing sun. l)o.vii at the rattling mill on the river bank, black forms, their bodies wet with perspiration, slash at the green cane stalks with huge razor-edged knives; they slash and hack and shovel with even strokes to the beat of the machinery they feed. Along the roadways are the same black forms; in the iields and on the railway tracks; on the river barges aud in the. stokeholds of the engines they toil like weary animals. They sweat in the Fijian siui by day, and they read the Koran by nignt; aud day and night they pray lor the end of their indenture; their goal is a wlute mans country. Clonics a time when they cease to how sugar cane and they drift to Suva. . the town whence come the steamers that sail for New Zealand . . . where fruit barrows on the street corners dazzle the white man's eyes; where toilet saloons are easily acquired, where farm labour is plentiful, where empty bottles liourisa ay the wayside. . . God's own country. Salaams! A MIXED CROWD. The average coolie in Fiji is a l°w ;aste importation. Recruiting foil; are not particular. They take any old thing that offers. To them Brahmin ind Panehama arc just "labour.'" They lave eonie from different language areas, ivhcrc each other's dialects are not understood. 'Hindustani is mangled hy Tamils and Telugas, and it is impossible to maintain any intellectual life or become anything 'but a rabble. With ;very hundred men recruited forty ivomen arc allowed, and the competition of the hundred for the forty leads to outrage, wild orgy, and a straying into the folds of the Fijian maidc. They look genuine ijpecimens of men, picturesque to a degree, but often offensive to the nose. They live in "lines" axlja'oent to the :ane fields. Tliey drink a mess called "Bhang," and eat rice between times. When they wear clothes, somebody's left-olf apparel is most favoured; usually it is s\rarming with vermin, and norms of latent disease, which have managed to kill the last occupant. Pleasures aro taken sadiv. When time lingers on his hands the coolie will concoct soiue fancied ca,usc for grief, and sit in front of his little hut just out of reach of the slop bucket, and rocking back and forth, burden the air with a mournful wail. His audience sits in huddled and crouching; attitudes of stupid immobility, with elbow and knee-cap bones sticking out. in horrible swellings. The naked youngsters enter into the gaieties of flic proceedings and stand in the doorways beating their pot-bellies in perfect time with the trailing*. The lost legion from English universities, who sleep in native on the outskirts of Suva and :adge half-crowns from tourists, arc not nore pathetic than the coolie in his lines. A STREET IN SUVA. A few minutes' walk from the wharf it Suva there is a dirty, straggling, •utty roadway known as All Nations street. It is line with tumble-down mts in all stages of disrepair; decayed veather-board bungalows, with rusty, lorous iron crowning the rotting walls; mtive houses, mongrel affairs with earth loors and transparent sides of palm eaves, with top-heavy roof of sugar ano crowning the wreck. There is not •„ trace of vegetation or colour. In dry ,-Gather dense clouds of dust and swarms if flies assail, and 011 a still day hang ivcr the street a buzzing, choking pall. ;omes the tropical rain and the place s transformed to a- swamp, a stinking, tic-icy quagmire. This is the hcadquarcrs of the Indian in Suva.

Here gather also the tattered coloured humanity, typos of dusky men and women of all the islands, with the Hindu, fresh from the lines, lording it over all.

The place seethes with animal life. Mangy dogs, lean pigs with long snouts, and fierce, disease stricken cats have :i free run. Under-sized, sensuous-looking women gossip at the doorways. They dress briefly, a gay square of cloth about

their limbs carelessly tucked in at the waist, and a sleeveless upper garment which fails to make connection with the lower. All display six inches of black skin at the waist, and all arc loaded down with brass leg and arm bangles. Heavy earrings show from beneath their gaudy silken head covering; their noses aro pierced, a bar of steel runs through the nostrils, and the skin is drawn tightly o the chocks and secured by silver coins. They are of the "forty to the hundred." AT NIGHT. All Nations Street wakes up with sundown. Dark shadows move in the roadway, and savage looking men move stealthily in the gloom. The hubbub ot a Babylonian-like rabble hums ill the air. Through the darkness peer bright eyes, soft eyes, and fierce eyes. Shortswarthy men, long men, fat men, some with bodies glistening with oil, othci= with disease-eaten skins slither along. Girls rush by, their black limbs exposed as the Oriental jewellery jingles on their arms and leg.-. Some arc graceiul. others volupt'JOiis-iipped, their eyes alight with greed and jealousy a? ih«y reveal their charms and seek approval, ila.* 'ir - liit about with bags full of linen and Oriental ware* to :lie brown maidens iron ionj. . launching Samoa,, girls, and TaMtmn bit, wears on to the 1.1. darkness. A pa"J u 1 , u . 6U j| s clean starched collar, anT - fn| | drift along thc chatt" volubly picking their «a>. . jr , ium |,„r lin Hindustan,. m 0 in ; same words, the Xew Zealand, rnoj ~, t " '["utl h-r the-mc^n pounds L-oieing from many hou_-c.- b> t.,c roadside.