Reflective memories: The Indian diaspora who call South Africa home

anniversary of the arrival of the Indian indentured labourers to the Port of Natal was commemorated. Prior and since, there has been a resurgence in the South African Indian population which included, but was not limited to, tracing their roots and finding their ancestral homes. This article shines a spotlight on the period 1895–1960 through the theoretical framework of indentureship by focusing on Mrs T.M. Singh and her journey on making a home Durban, a coastal city in KwaZulu-Natal (one of the nine provinces in South Africa) boasts the Durban Harbour. One hundred and sixty-two years ago, this harbour was referred to as the Port of Natal. Between the year’s of 1860 and 1911, 152 184 indentured Indian labourers entered the British owned Colony of Natal through this port. Even though indentureship was officially abolished in Natal on 21 July 1911, the hardships and challenges endured by Indian nationals in Natal continued. This article shines a spotlight on the period 1895–1960 through the theoretical prism of indentureship by focusing on the reflective memories of the respondent, Mr J.S. Singh, a nonagenarian. Using oral history methodology, face-to-face interviews were held with the respondent. His reflective memories brought alive the reality of life experiences in Natal between 1895 and 1960. He shared the journey of his Indian born paternal grandmother, Mrs Takurine Mahesh Singh who constitutes the cohort that left their country of birth as Indian nationals but subsequently created the Indian diaspora in Natal, where their descendants now call South Africa their home. Contribution: The content of this article is not simply described but also briefly reflected upon and explored as certain issues may be of interest to new, emerging and established oral historians. Furthermore, audio and video recordings of the interviews, which clearly illustrate oral history as the methodology as applied in this research, are available for academic, education and research purposes.


Introduction
This article is conceptualised into four parts. Part One is the Introduction, part Two is the background to the history of Indian national and indentured labourer, matriarch Mrs Takurine Mahesh Singh and Part Three echoes the reflective memories of her South African born grandson Mr Jaisingh Singh, a retired school principal and organic intellectual who at 91 years of age was of clear mind with a vivid memory. Part Four concludes this article with recommendations.

Aim
The aim of the research is twofold. Firstly, to discover and highlight the reflective memories of Mr Singh who shared his paternal grandmother's acceptance and adoption when the decision was made and she realised that her destiny was to live out her life in Natal, post 1895. Secondly, this research draws attention to the Indian nationals who came to Natal, thereby creating the Indian diaspora in South Africa.

The reason for this study
In the year 2010, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Indian indentured labourers to the Port of Natal was commemorated. Prior and since, there has been a resurgence in the South African Indian population which included, but was not limited to, tracing their roots and finding their ancestral homes. This article shines a spotlight on the period 1895-1960 through the theoretical framework of indentureship by focusing on Mrs T.M. Singh and her journey on making a home Durban, a coastal city in KwaZulu-Natal (one of the nine provinces in South Africa) boasts the Durban Harbour. One hundred and sixty-two years ago, this harbour was referred to as the Port of Natal. Between the year's of 1860 and 1911, 152 184 indentured Indian labourers entered the British owned Colony of Natal through this port. Even though indentureship was officially abolished in Natal on 21 July 1911, the hardships and challenges endured by Indian nationals in Natal continued. This article shines a spotlight on the period 1895-1960 through the theoretical prism of indentureship by focusing on the reflective memories of the respondent, Mr J.S. Singh, a nonagenarian. Using oral history methodology, face-to-face interviews were held with the respondent. His reflective memories brought alive the reality of life experiences in Natal between 1895 and 1960. He shared the journey of his Indian born paternal grandmother, Mrs Takurine Mahesh Singh who constitutes the cohort that left their country of birth as Indian nationals but subsequently created the Indian diaspora in Natal, where their descendants now call South Africa their home.
in Natal, a foreign land. November 2022 marks 162 years since the arrival of the indentured labourers to Natal.

Structure of the article
The structure of the article is conceptualised into three parts. Part One is the Introduction, Part Two is the background to the story of Mrs Takurine Mahesh Singh and Part Three echoes the reflective memories of her grandson. The article follows an unassuming structure as the Introduction provides the aim, reason, literature review of the research and the methodology used to reach that aim. The terminology is outlined and the interpretation of results will be briefly explained. A second shorter part will provide the background to Mrs Singh's story while the main body, Part Three, of the article contains the unmediated reflections of the respondent. However, some brief comments are shared alongside these unmediated reflections as the respondent's memories, reflections, thoughts and analysis together with the researcher's comments are catalysts for further greater depth follow up studies. These reflections are arranged thematically. The themes were identified from the interview in terms of the respondent's thoughts and perceptions about his grandmother's home in the Colony of Natal, now KwaZulu-Natal. The challenges, limitations and benefits of reflective memories are noted in the conclusion section as these ignite the spark for the oral history interview approach.

Methodology
This presentation is based on face-to-face interviews held on 01 July 2022, with Mr J.S. Singh, a retired school principal and an organic intellectual who was born on the 15th of September in 1930. The interviews were held at his home in Verulam, incidentally the same plot of land where his father and grandmother lived. At 91 years of age, Mr Singh is of clear mind with a vivid memory. The only item that he was unsure of during the interview was the year of his father's birth as there was uncertainty of that in the records. Through openended questions and using oral history interview methodology, Mr Singh's reflective memories shed light on the adopted diasporic home in South Africa. The open-ended questions worked well in terms of information gathering as Mr Singh spoke uninterruptedly and provided his own insights. Mr Singh's reflective memories brought alive the reality of life during the first half of the 1900s in Natal as he shared aspects of the conjoined life journey of his Indian born paternal grandmother and his Natal born father. Mr Singh was 29 years of age when his grandmother passed on in 1959 and thus his long-term memory served and achieved this research aim with distinction. In as much as reflective memories have the potential to add value in rewriting history, there are some challenges, limitations and benefits of them as noted in the conclusion of the article.

Key concepts
Indentureship, diaspora and organic intellectual are explained as the main concepts of this article as the matriarch was an indentured Indian national. With the movement of millions of Indians across the world, the Indian diaspora developed globally.

Indentureship
Indentureship was a temporary contract or agreement between an employer and labourer that existed for many centuries. However, from the 16th century onwards, the European desire to exploit the agricultural possibilities of their new colonies meant the system took on a vaste nature. Workers were contracted to work for an employer for a period of five years (embarking on international voyages from which few would return), frequently enticed by the promise that completion of the indenture contract could sometimes include a portion of land to settle on in lieu of a voyage home (Tulving 1962).

Diaspora
With the emergence of diaspora studies as a field, scholars from different disciplines have offered diverse definitions of the concept of diaspora. Scholarly debates about what constitutes a diaspora continue to thrive and scholars have identified and discussed the defining features of diaspora. Using ATLAS.ti, a qualitative data analysis software, the most prevalent attributes of diaspora in those definitions were coded and aggregated by Grossman (2019). The features that appear in at least half of the definitions are: dispersal or immigration, location outside a homeland, community, orientation to a homeland, transnationalism and group identity.

Organic intellectual
According to Strine (1991), organic intellectuals are in a unique position to intervene in hegemonic conceptions of the world to bring into being a new mode of thought. By closely aligning their theoretical work with their identified social group's internal struggles for self-empowerment and local sovereignty, organic intellectuals can ideally generate counter theories of social and cultural processes, explanations that are at once historically grounded, contextually nuanced, and politically emancipating.

Literary review
In terms of the literature review, a desktop investigation into the conventional literature was conducted. Key words such as matriarch, Colony of Natal, South Africa, Indian nationals, Indenture, Diaspora and reflective memory were searched and unfortunately, not only were there limited results but mainly missing are the stories of the history of female indentureship in Natal.
Mrs Singh was one of 152 184 Indian nationals who came to Natal as an indentured labourer and this bonded slave-like migration from India post the 1830s (Abolition of Slavery) led to the growth of the Indian diaspora in many parts of the globe and to this end, South Africa currently has the largest http://www.hts.org.za Open Access population of approximately 1 560 000 Indians outside of India who call South Africa home. This is approximately 2.5% of the total population of South Africa.
In a chapter in Recasting Jahaji-Bhain: Plantation History and the Indo-Caribbean Women's Novel in Trinidad, Guyana and Martinique, the author, Pirbhai (2012), states in the abstract: Given the paucity of official documentation on indentured women's labor, these narratives are often structurally dependent on family history, folklore, oral testimony and other communitybased sources that are under threat of erasure with each generation's passing. Indenture history thus appears in the form of a subplot or flashback, where a young woman finds herself consciously or unwittingly engaged in 'connecting the dots' between past and present generations, and navigating the often distorted line between private and public memory. (p. 25) Because of the paucity of literature of female indentureship in South Africa, this article adds significant value. There is available literature on Indian indenture (Bhana 1991;Desai & Vahed 2010;Meer 1969;Mishra 2008;Tinker 1974) but these authors have written extensively on different aspects of indenture, colonisation, culture and South African Indians (Archary & Landman 2021:3). There is paucity in terms of women's indentureship in the Colony of Natal.

Interpretation of results
In terms of the interpretation of results, a non-interpretational method and thematic approach has been used in this research. Mr Singh shared his memories, reflections, thoughts and analysis which were recorded and are presented in this article in an unmediated manner, that is by not analysing, mediating nor interpreting them. However, some brief comments are shared alongside these unmediated reflections as the respondent's memories, reflections, thoughts and analysis together with the researcher's comments are catalysts for further greater depth follow up studies. These unmediated reflections are systematically organised and captured under suitable themes. What follows is Part Two, which is the background to Mrs Singh's story as she was part of the cohort which constituted the Indian diaspora being established in Natal and consequently developing and living as South Africans in Africa.

Part Two
In this section of the article, the background to Mrs Singh's story as well as a synopsis on the Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA) is provided.

Background to Mrs Singh's story
When the indentured labourers left Colonial India from the ports of Madras and Calcutta, they lost their homes in all sense of the meaning 'to lose' as they never knew whether or not they would return to their ancestral homes after departure. By physically leaving their homes, they lost their houses and all that the home represented to them at that point in time. This article titled, 'Reflective memories: The Indian diaspora who call South Africa home', outlines what was lost when the matriarch left her Indian home in April 1895 and how she remade her home after she arrived in her adopted foreign country.
In terms of a common basic framework for this article, 'losing' refers to that which has been taken away or cannot be recovered. 'Remaking' is viewed within the context of to make over, modify and remodel as this is clearly what the matriarch did when she arrived in Natal. And it is in this remaking of her home that her descendants, now in the fifth generation, call South Africa home. The matriarch travelled across the Indian ocean, losing her home, never to return to India but was fully engaged and involved in building her Natal wood and iron hut, tin home in which she lived until her death in 1959, aged 87.
The year 1895 is selected as this was the year that the 23-year-old left India and arrived in Natal. The year 1960 marked the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Indian nationals to the Port of Natal. Her son, Surujballee Mahesh Singh, would have been born around 1900, but whose date of birth is contested, as the respondent mentioned during the interview that his father had to be elevated to the status of an 11-year-old boy so that he could sign papers on behalf of his mother who was illiterate.
Apparently at the time he was 8 years old but his date of birth was registered as being born three years prior. In creating and presenting this background to her story, the question to be asked is 'Why was Mrs Singh identified for this research paper?' The answer can be found by considering the work done by OHASA.

Oral History Association of South Africa
The Oral History Association of South Africa has multiple mandates but its primary objective is to promote and facilitate the recording, preservation, access, popularisation and study of oral history in South Africa. This includes poetry, music, oral praise, oral performance and oral tradition. One of the techniques used in order to achieve these objectives includes but is not limited to OHASA establishing a Publication Portfolio which includes journal articles, conference proceedings, newsletters and a Coffee knowledge can best be described as encyclopaedic. His articulation, analysis and insight currently outshine people half his age. At 91 years of age, he is an organic intellectual, an active and involved community leader and can tell you the stories of the valleys, rivers, trees, hilltops, pathways, and land as was experienced not only through his father's eyes but also through his grandmother's spoken words in Hindi, her mother tongue.
Oral traditions and oral history are instrumental in capturing why, when, who, how and what happened to diasporic communities throughout the world in recent history, especially post World War I when ancestral homes were lost and then the necessity to remake them in a foreign land. Thus, it is fair to state that the relevance of research into diasporic communities is firmly placed at the intersection of current general awareness and requires broader global change. In terms of general awareness, one needs to know and if possible have an understanding of one's ancestral roots. Upon this understanding of where we have come from, broader global change can develop. Global change that should include, but is not limited to, an understanding of the diversities that exist in the world and the value of inclusiveness as we are human beings at the end of the day who need to socially interact with each other in and out of our homes. Therefore, this article describes certain aspects of the Indian diasporic home as it applies to losing a home in India and remaking that home in Natal where the descendants now call South Africa home. This extrapolation leads to Part Three of the article where the reflective memories enshrine the value add and complement the significance of this research.

Part Three
In this section, the content and context of the meeting with Mr Singh is provided in light of the choice of oral history methodology being used for this research. Furthermore, in this section of the article, the memories, reflections, thoughts and analysis which were recorded are shared. These reflective memories contain the unmediated reflections of the respondent and are arranged thematically. The themes were identified from the interview in terms of the respondent's thoughts and perceptions about his grandmother's home in the Colony of Natal, now South Africa. However, some brief comments are shared alongside these unmediated reflections as the respondent's memories, reflections, thoughts and analysis together with the researcher's comments are catalysts for further greater depth follow up studies.

Context to meeting Mr Singh
On the prescheduled day of the oral history interview, 01 July 2022, upon meeting Mr Singh in his garden, I enquired as to his wellbeing. He looked comfortable despite using a walker and wearing knee and leg bandages but sounded well and was actually hanging out his washing to be sundried. It was a beautiful Friday around midday. After the initial greeting, we walked into his house, using the kitchen entrance. These interviews with Mr Singh were to ascertain why his grandmother lost her house in India and how she rebuilt a home in Natal.
The topic was mentioned to him initially and he was reminded later what the topic was. It may be assumed that in light of this reminder he conscientiously introduced how the Indian nationals changed in their outlook when they were living in Natal, what they adapted and adopted and also what they maintained as they continued to live in Natal. He brought in new and different ideas if he believed that they added value to this research. He mentioned related aspects which are also included in this article under thematic subheadings.

Cross cultural items
One of the first items Mr Singh mentioned was the grinding stone, called a seal/sil batta in Hindi. In the garden, alongside the washing trough, Mr Singh has an aged grinding stone that his grandmother and then mother used to grind ginger, garlic, turmeric and other items. He pointed to the patterns and engravings on the stone which is probably about 8 kg -10 kg. This item was obtained locally from the Zulus and in the remaking of the home, cross cultural items have been exchanged to make tasks more manageable. This is an example of how Mrs Singh adapted to her new home. She adopted items that would have made life easier as she now had many more responsibilities such as caring for her five grandchildren born to her daughter who passed on the age of 35. Her son-in-law, now a widower, left the children with her and told her to look after them which she dutifully did with the assistance of her first-born child, son Mr S.M. Singh.

The radio and cellphone
Once Mr Singh and I were inside the house, I noticed his cellphone and radio and this sparked an interest. I asked him how he was managing with his new cellphone as the landlines were now down for about six weeks due the torrential rains and subsequent flooding in April 2022. This is the first cellphone that Mr Singh owns and so he replied cautiously: 'There are some programmes I like, particularly when there are interviews. I like "Hindvani" because they play a lot of old songs that I used to listen to when I was younger, which were then the hits of that time shall I say. Now and then this radio plays a lot of old songs and I get a good feeling that they are not lost.' http://www.hts.org.za Open Access

Music and the records
Music plays many significant roles in one's life, such as putting one in a feel-good mood, creating nostalgic moments and being a silent partner to those alone and this is no different to the 91-year-old. But for me, the link to his grandmother is interesting. As the conversation progressed in the kitchen, I asked about his grandmother and if she would have listened to any of these songs, to which he replied: 'No, you see, my grandmother would only listen to songs that were religious and in those days we had a gramophone and a gramophone is used to play the records. Although the gramophone is a thing of the past I still have some records and a new type of gramophone and it works electronically but it can play those records and it reminds me of my granny, of those days and what she liked to listen to […] I think the same thing happens now when someone gets glued to the TV programmes.'

Songs and the gramophone
Mr Singh mentioned the 'gramophone' which played the records. During his youth they listened to a lot of Hindi songs which played on the gramophone and his granny's favourite was the 'Ramayan'. The Ramayan is a Hindu epic and the scriptural teachings are followed by Hindus throughout the world. Hindu values, morals, traditions and ethics are espoused through these Ramayan scriptures.
Mrs Singh ensured that her two young children and grandchildren were taught the concepts as espoused in the Ramayan. As indicated earlier, Mr Singh was informed of the topic and it became clear during the interview that he kept the topic in mind when he shared memories because he brought to my attention: 'She was very passionate to what was on radio. From an Indentured Labourer who didn't know what a radio looked like to someone who now started listening to the bhajans that she liked and it became a sort of passion for her.' This was a further indication that he was thinking of her back in India. In India she did not know of, nor have a radio. But upon living here in Natal, she was able to listen to her religious songs via the gramophone and records. This was a form of empowerment and entertainment in its simplest form.

The wooden cabinet and Queen Elizabeth
As we still stood in his kitchen, Mr Singh continued to talk by referring to items in his kitchen, especially those items that went back in time to his grandmother's time. In light of this, by pointing to a wooden cabinet he stated: As Mr Singh spoke, it became obvious, that when making reference to his parents, and especially to his mother observing his father shaving, and the fact that he would wear a suit to work thereafter, jogged his memory and hence he mentioned the Western clothing.

Western clothing
Mr Singh shared the following information during the interview so that I would be informed that the indentured labourers began westernising in Natal as soon as the opportunity arose: 'When the whites [sic] were leaving Verulam and they were selling things, people bought homes, clothing, and furniture. If you look at the residents at the time, they were wearing western clothing. Where did they get them from? They bought it from the whites who left. The Indians made Verulam their home, I think after the second world war after they got [sic] home.' So, it may be assumed that in losing their homes, men mainly lost the need or desire to dress in traditional clothing -that being a dhothi or in English, a loin cloth around their waist, vest to cover their chest and turban on their head, with open sandals on their feet but in remaking their homes, they began wearing closed shoes, formal pants, buttoned shirts and suits which they mainly purchased as second-hand goods from white people who were leaving the area. Mr Singh showed me a photograph of his grandfather, possibly around 1900 in a suit which would never have been the case had they still lived in India.
Mr Singh surmises that that was possibly a second-hand suit that he purchased. In contrast though, in another black and white photograph, his grandmother, who never wore English styled clothing but kept to her traditional Indian outfit, is pictured in a saree. Thus, in remaking her home here, she maintained the Indian dress code. Her daughter also maintained the dress code but her granddaughters now in their 80s and 90s have become accustomed to wearing Western clothing. In their youth and early married days, the granddaughters would have worn sarees at home and whenever they left the home.

Economic decisions
The action of dealing in currency coins was brought to my attention by Mr Singh as he continually went back and forth to actions and behavioural patterns that reminded him of the topic of losing and remaking home. According to Mr Singh, in India, women never really handled money at the time of his grandmother. Men handled all matters dealing with finance, so when she departed from her home, she also lost the action of not handling money. When she built her new and different life in this country, she was thrown into the deep end as she had to learn very quickly the art of bargaining, handling foreign currency and making economic decisions. Apparently, she was quite competent. Mr Singh shared: 'In India, the people who worked in the farms were paid in Rupees but when they came here it was like the first time that they actually touched money in their lives and this was a great change in their lives. What is remarkable [...], take the case of my grandmother, she was able to actually calculate that this is the cost of what she has sold and this is how much she needs to give.'

Literacy in Natal
The need for English as a written and spoken language became important to the diasporic Indians in the Colony of Natal. The opportunity to communicate with the local community in English moved from a choice to a necessity as witnessed by Mrs Singh. After her husband's death, Mrs Singh realised the need for literacy in Natal. Upon the death of his father in 1908, her 8-year-old son had to be elevated to the status of an 11-year-old boy so that he could sign papers on behalf of his mother who was illiterate. Despite losing her house in India, Mrs Singh was able to remake her home in Natal even though she was a widowed sole breadwinner.

Part Four
In this section, the conclusion of the research which includes recommendations is presented.

Conclusion
Cross cultural items, the radio and cellphone, music and records, songs and the gramophone, the wooden cabinet, Queen Elizabeth, Western clothing, economic decisions and literacy in Natal are just some of the phenomena that Mrs Singh engaged with in her transition from ancestral India to the home she built in foreign Natal. These items, decisions and phenomena are but some of the aspects that Mr Singh mentioned during the course of the interview. In reflecting, he did not focus on the trauma that his grandmother experienced but rather chose to share how she survived, what she did to keep her family alive and other socio-cultural experiential aspects of being in the Colony. He did not speak much of what she missed about her native India and asserted that much is left to conjecture as neither her children nor grandchildren had the courage to ask in-depth questions about her native Motherland India.
For follow up interviews, Mr Singh has agreed to delve into his personal collection to ascertain if there are any notes, documents, artefacts, and the like that will provide more information on how his grandfather passed away and perhaps take us back in time to a world during 1895-1960 by focusing on his grandmother's inner struggles, hardships and courage.

Recommendations
Using oral history methodology, face-to-face interviews and reflective memories lends itself to describing, chronical capturing, highlighting, outlining and filling in the gaps that are existent in female indentureship history. However, there are limitations, challenges and benefits of engaging the use of reflective memories. In terms of nonagenarians and organic intellectuals, much is left to their memory and the representations as portrayed by them. Thus, the recommendation is to use reflective memory as a tool assisting in the oral history methodology approach.

Limitations or challenges
Research endeavours clearly indicate or draw parallels to the outcome that methods used to reach the aims of any study, should not simply be described. They should also be reflected upon and explored as certain issues may be of interest to other researchers. In terms of the oral history interviews as a methodological approach, I established that when a question is asked, patience is required as the respondent tended to go on speaking about the topic he remembered quite well during previous episodes. From one aspect, it led to another and I could not just interrupt the flow of thought.
However, when Mr Singh stopped for a breath of air, I interjected. Reflective memories as a source for the writing and capturing of history may be questioned; however, the reflective memories as provided by the respondent can be triangulated with his previous writings, articles, photographs, recordings, newspaper clippings and other primary sources.
He has a collection of items, for example, brass containers, awards, newspaper clippings, artefacts, physical items such as a grinding stone which date to the early 1900s and his records show that these items were in the family house when his mother married in 1925 or thereabouts. Another challenge was that Mr Singh branched out into other aspects of information sharing based on what was asked. This does eat into the interview time and some of the raw information may be processed for future follow up papers, along this research theme and topic.

Benefits of reflective memories
Despite there being challenges and limitations associated with reflective memory, these were and can be turned around to show benefits of using this methodology. Mr Singh has a predominantly uninterrupted long-term memory and is currently active in community-based projects, such as being the President of the 1860 Indentured Labourers Foundation Verulam, Founder of the Historical Society in Verulam, among others. As an ex-educator and retired school principal, he has been meaningfully occupied in his retirement by engaging in research, documenting and writing on numerous aspects of indentureship, the history of Verulam and other thematically relevant and value-adding heritage projects. He has a record of 72 years of community service which he continues to uphold. Therefore, the oral history methodology approach suited this research as his reflective memories produced suitable and relevant information required to capture the realities of losing and remaking a home around 1900.

Further research options
Future research that may be undertaken by oral historians, could perhaps include research topics centred around the gramophone and telephonic landlines as these items clearly equate to the impact of the microwave in the kitchen around the 1980s, the hair straightener in the hair salon in the 1990s and availability of smart phones everywhere as we moved into the 2000s. As we stood in the kitchen, Mr Singh continued mentioning other relevant and interesting socio-cultural items and this fermented the use of oral history methods, face-to-face interviews and reflective memory as a result of its value add to memory and the writing and recording of what happened previously.