Brij V Lal

Biographic Data

ID505239
NAMEBrij V Lal
GIVEN NAMESBrij V
FAMILY NAMELal
SIGNATURELAL B V
AFFILIATIONSAustralian National University
ORCID0009-0002-2037-3405
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS70
TOTAL CITATIONS113
AUTHOR COUNT64
EDITOR COUNT6
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1980
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX5

  • A girmitiya’s grandson

    Open AccessBrij V LalARTICLEJournal of Indentureship and its…2024

    Brij Vilash Lal was an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University and Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland. He taught History at the ANU, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of the South Pacific and the University of Papua New Guinea. He was a Life Member of Clare Gall, University of Cambridge. He was the author of more than twenty books and editor of another twenty on the history and culture of the India…

  • Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation

    International Labour Office, Brij V Lal et al.BOOKPlantation Workers2022

  • Fiji: Troubled journey of a beleaguered nation

    Brij V LalARTICLEThe Round Table2021

    In this highly personalised essay, the author, who was born in Fiji to first generation immigrants from India, reflects on the dramatic – and, to many, heart-rending – transformation that Fijian society has undergone since its independence from British rule just half a century ago. He attributes Fiji’s decline, and its culture of coup d’etats, to a deep-rooted failure of leadership which allowed symbols of democracy to prevail over its substance

  • A Pacific turbulence

    Brij V LalARTICLEThe Round Table2021

    On 4 February 2021, the Vice Chancellor of the Fiji-based regional, inter-governmental University of the South Pacific (USP), Professor Pal Ahluwalia, had his work permit revoked summarily, was dec

  • Of Ruptures and Recuperations: Fiji’s Fifty Years of Independence

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2021

    Fiji marked its 50th anniversary of independence on 10 October 2020. Fiji’s postcolonial journey has been both fraught as well as traumatic. A race-based political culture hobbled Fiji’s development as a modern multiracial democracy. The country has endured four coups in two decades with profound consequences for its social and economic progress. Its future as a democratic polity looks uncertain under a decreed constitution

  • Indian indenture: History and historiography in a nutshell

    Open AccessBrij V LalARTICLEJournal of Indentureship and its…2021Cited by: 3

    The establishment of the academic study of Indentureship is a relatively recent development that has been led by descendants of indentured labourers from across the diaspora. This article highlights key moments in both the history and historiography of Indentureship. Looking first at the system established by the British on plantations across their colonies, it goes on to consider the variety of labourers' backgrounds and the process of social eq…

  • ‘A Most Callous Indifference’

    Brij V LalCHAPTERWomen, Gender and the Legacy of…2020

    Sukhdei, five foot something and a loner, was a girmitiya from the district of Mathura, in western Uttar Pradesh. Sukhdei was one of 13,596 Indian women who came to Fiji, all adults, as indentured labourers. She was one of 262 from the district of Mathura, and one of 510 who were Brahmins. The majority came as single migrants though there were about four thousand who came as members of families. On his way back, Totaram reported Sukhdei to Brackm…

  • The New Port Moresby: Gender, Space, and Belonging in Urban Papua New Guinea

    Open AccessC Sparks, Ceridwen Spark et al.BOOKNew Port Moresby2020Cited by: 1

  • Girmit

    Brij V LalARTICLESouth Asia Journal of South Asian…2017

    Girmit derives from the word ‘agreement’ under which more than one million Indian \nindentured labourers went to work on the plantations of the ‘King Sugar’ colonies around \nthe globe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Agreement stipulated the \nterms and conditions of service. These varied in small details between the colonies, but \nthey all stated the nature and condition of work and remuneration for it, and the provision of…

  • Trinidad during the 19th century: The Indian experience

    Brij V LalARTICLEDiaspora Studies2016

    In 1974, Hugh Tinker published his massively influential account of Indian indenture titled A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Abroad, 1830–1920 (London: Oxford University Press)

  • A Girmitiya ‘Sepoy’

    Brij V LalARTICLESouth Asia Journal of South Asian…2016Cited by: 1

    Each of Anthony Low's students will have a story to tell about how they came to work with him as one of his ‘sepoys’. Let me share mine. In 1976, I had finished my Masters in History at the Univers

  • Winding Up the British Empire in the Pacific Islands

    Brij V LalARTICLEAustralian Historical Studies2015

    David McIntyre, retired professor of history at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, is a distinguished scholar of imperial and Commonwealth affairs. The general series of which this volume

  • In Frank Bainimarama's Shadow: Fiji, Elections and the Future

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2014Cited by: 1

    Fiji's much anticipated election was held in September 2014, returning Frank Bainimarama's Fiji First Party to power under a proportional representation open list system sanctioned by the decreed 2013 constitution. It marks an important step on a long and fraught journey back to parliamentary democracy. A new start has been made, but a lot will depend on how deeply Bainimarama's publicly declared multiracial vision is shared by his own supporters…

  • Persona Non Grata: Breaking the bond: Fiji and New Zealand 2004–2007

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2014

    Michael Green was New Zealand's high commissioner to Fiji from 2004 until 2007, when he was declared persona non grata by Fiji's military regime and forced to leave the country. He died young in Ap

  • Transnational Migrations: The Indian Diaspora

    Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, William Safran et al.BOOKTransnational Migrations2013

    This book studies Indian diaspora, currenlty 20 million across the world, from various perspectives. It looks at the 'transnational' nature of the middle class worker. Other aspects include: post 9/11 challenges; ethnicity in USA; cultural identity versus national identity; gender issues amongst the diaspora communities. It argues that Indian middle classes have the unique advantages of skills, mobility, cultural rootedness and ethics of hard-wor…

  • In Search of ‘The Children of the Wind’: A Journey to Chattisgarh

    Brij V LalARTICLESouth Asia Journal of South Asian…2013

    We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking changed, and we wished to know, it was too late.V.S. Naipaul 1 1 V.S. Naipaul, ‘V.S. Naipaul—Nobel Lecture: Two Worlds’, Nobelprize.org. (2001) [http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html, accessed 13 Feb. 2013]

  • Fiji: Sailing in Uncharted Seas

    Brij V LalARTICLEThe Round Table2013

  • The Turtle and the Caduceus: How Pacific politics and modern medicine shaped the Medical School in Fiji, 1885–2010

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2013

    The Turtle and the Caduceus: how Pacific politics and modern medicine shaped the Medical School in Fiji, 1885–2010. By David Brewster. Bloomington, Xlibris, 2010. 455 pp., illus., maps. ISBN 978-1

  • New Flags Flying: Pacific leadership

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2013

  • Manuscript XXVI: The Implications Of Fijian Independence

    Brij V LalARTICLEJournal of Pacific History2013

    Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrij V. LalSchool of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University

  • Turnings: Fiji Factions

    Brij V LalBOOKTurnings2013Cited by: 2

    Through Dr Lal's refreshingly clear and powerful prose and sharply observed stories, we enter the inner world of Indo-Fijian feeling and aspiration. One universal that emerges with particular clarity in the Indo-Fijian experience is the ceaseless struggle to find community in a changing world, balancing the beauty of ritual and tradition against the transcendent value of

  • Electoral systems in divided societies: The Fiji constitution

    Peter Larmour, Brij V LalBOOKElectoral systems in divided…2012

  • Chalo Jahaji: On a journey through indenture in Fiji

    Brij V LalBOOKChalo Jahaji2012

    “It is a milestone in subaltern studies, a biographical journey penned by a living relic of the indentured experience and a scholar whose thoroughly interdisciplinary approach is a good example for the anthropologist, the sociologist or the economist who wish to see the proper integration of their disciplines in a major historical work.” — Brinsley Samaroo, University of the

  • Trajectories of Transformation: Fiji Indians from Common Roll to Consociationalism

    Brij V LalARTICLEDiaspora Studies2012

    The scholarship on Indian indentured migration and settlement in the far-flung ‘King Sugar’ colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean has flourished in the last two

  • Trajectories of Transformation: Fiji Indians from Common Roll to Consociationalism

    Brij V LalARTICLEDiaspora Studies2012