Kunti's cry: Indentured women on Fiji plantations

“Women, it has been shown here, generally suffered greater hardships than men. They shouldered the dual burden of plantation work and the double standards of morality, and carried the blame for many of the ills of indenture. To be sure, they were not the chaste heroines of Indian mythology that the Indian nationalists made them out to be, but neither, on the other hand, were they the immoral ‘doe rabbits’ of the overseers’ accounts. Kunti’s private cry was, in a very real sense, a protest against the veil of dishonour that Indian women wore, or rather were made to wear, during their indenture on Fiji plantations.”