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Nilima Rao is a Fijian Indian Australian who has always referred to herself as "culturally confused." She has since learned that we are all confused in some way and has been published on the topic by Australia's Special Broadcasting Service as part of the SBS Emerging Writers Competition and now feels better about the whole thing. When she isn't writing, Nilima can be found wrangling data (the dreaded day job) or wandering around Melbourne laneways in search of the next new wine bar. A Disappearance in Fiji is her first novel, and she is currently working on the second in the series.
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What's the historical backdrop to your novel?
The book is set in 1914. At that time Fiji had been a British colony for about 30 years; there was a predominant Indigenous Fijian group, and then a British colonial administration running the country. The British colonizers brought in Indian indentured servants by the shipload to work in the sugarcane fields. At the end of the five years, the Indians could stay in the colonies with land allowances for their own farms, and then after five years as a free person the British would pay for you to go back if you wanted to.
It was an exploitative program. The people signing these contracts were the poorest of the poor, and illiterate. The people getting them to sign were lying about the working conditions and the contract's terms—it was often much more than the five years—and even about where Fiji was; they said it was in India just past Calcutta. Still, the opportunities were better than their equivalents in India. If you could make it through the exploitation, you ended up better off.
What got you interested in this period?
My great-grandparents came to Fiji from India as indentured servants. Sixty thousand indentured servants went to Fiji, and thirty thousand returned. ...
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