Fear of Culture: British Regulation of Indian Marriage in Post-Indenture Fiji
Author(s)
Kelly, John D.
Abstract
Fiji’s colonial government resisted the imperial requirement to respect Indian “customary law,” especially in marriage. Administrators readily codified versions of indigenous Fijian “custom” as law but refused to grant legitimacy or authority to customs of the Indians come to Fiji as “coolies” and plantation “labor units.” In debate over Indian marriage law-child marriage, bride selling, polygamy, “purdah,” licensing of pandits, and so on-they resisted recognizing as valid all forms of Indian custom. The difference in policy followed the special project of colonial Fiji: the civilizing of the indigenous Fijians. The Indians, brought to Fiji as a means to that end, were considered (unlike the indigenous Fijians) to be “free” of custom already, but to be animalistic by nature and inferior to Europeans by race-a perfect working class. The British thus feared Indian culture as an anomaly threatening their order and progress in Fiji.
