Women and migration in South Africa - historical and literary perspectives

When Indians migrated from India to Natal in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as both indentured and free Indians, women were an important component of the newcomers. The lives of indentured women have only recently begun to gain critical attention in South African historiography. The narratives of free or ‘passenger’ Indian women have largely been narrated from the vantage point of ‘passenger’ males in the context of their arrival and settlement in Natal. The inclusion of their narratives into the history of Indian South Africans will stimulate a rethinking of the gendered experiences of Indian immigrants in the context of concomitant differences among ethnic groups, social mobility, and the processes of acculturation and integration. Moreover, it will bring to the fore a category of immigrant women whose histories have yet to be fully explored and documented.