From indentured labour to cultural revival

BURIED in the archives repository at Pietermaritzburg is a letter that discusses the correspondence between the Transvaal Benefit Society and the Commissioner of Asiatic Affairs in 1936.

- SELVAN NAIDOO

The Transvaal Tamil Benefit Society appeals for the Principal of the Doornfontein Indian Tamil School, Mr Thiagarajoo Suppan, to be granted permission to remain in Transvaal to mitigate the stipulations of the Asiatic Registration Act of 1906, of the Transvaal Colony, specifically aimed at Asians (Indians and Chinese) that required every Asian male to register himself and produce on demand a thumb-printed certificate of identity.

Reading against the archival grain of The Transvaal Tamil Benefit Society appeal merges the desperation of the Tamil community to retain the services of the Tamil Language teacher to ensure their children "don't suffer" the indignity of not being taught their mother tongue language. The letter foregrounds the continued need of the Tamil community to ensure that their cultural identity is retained in their African homes since the first indentured workers arrived in South Africa on November 16, 1860. It is significant to note that of the 152 184 indentured workers that arrived in South Africa from 1860 to 1911, 101 468 or 66.6% of indentured Indians disembarked from the port city of Madras (now Chennai) after being recruited from the principal areas of Tamil Nadu in the South of India.

Further insight into the preservation of the Tamil cultural identity in South Africa is beautifully afforded to us in the autobiography of Coolie Doctor Dr Kesaveloo Goonam described in the 1920s. In the first chapter, she writes about her influence to learn the Tamil language coming from one of its finest orators, Mulukmahomed Lappa Sultan, who spoke the purest Tamil and who often chided her if she had not attended Tamil School in the afternoon.