In Search of 'The Children of the Wind': A Journey to Chattisgarh

Abstract

Brij V. Lal from Australian National University, Canberra tried to search those people of Indian origin who had migrated from Chattisgarh to settle in Fiji. Brij V. Lal started his journey in search of Fiji girmitiyas (indentured laborers) in 1977, as part of his doctoral dissertation on the origins of Fiji's North Indian migrants. During the course of his research, he read and coded each and every one of the forty-five thousand Emigration Passes and computer analyzed them. It was a hectic job, which involved reading reel upon reel of microfilm in the darkened basement of the Australian National Library in Canberra. Each important piece of information in each 'Emigration Pass', caste of the migrant, his or her district of origin and district of registration, gender and next of kin, had to be coded and entered individually on a specially-designed sheet of paper and analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences on the massive UNIVAC computer.