Assimilation was our sole strategy, the totem we believed would protect us.

Vaasudeva kutumbukam. The whole world is one family. —Ancient Sanskrit mantra

He settled on salt. "History has no instance of a tax as cruel as the salt tax," Gandhi declared; through it, "the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless." The issue was not only taxation, though the tax was heavy, working out by his account to 2,400 percent over the sale price. Indians were also

So they continued to bring in Indian workers, who continued to exercise their right to stay after their contracts expired; and they continued, reluctantly, to admit passenger Indians.

If his father's absence had been unique, perhaps it might have caused Bhupendra more grief. But in fact, few fathers were present in the neighborhood, and it had been that way for a long time. Bhupendra knew that paternal migration had begun at least two generations earlier, with his grandfather Motiram. Now, almost all of his uncles and older

Lenasia—"Land of the Asians," a formerly Indian-only suburb that, like the rest of the new South Africa, was in a period of transition. Many Indians were moving "up" to the formerly white areas. Black and "coloured" (South Africa's term for mixed-race) people were likewise moving "up" to the Indian areas. Most Indians were not pleased by these

Years later, my cousin would recall this last and worst beating by saying, At this stage if someone said it they would call it abusing. At the time, though, it was a father's prerogative—and an echo, perhaps, of many generations, many childhoods. For everyone in our family has an opinion or an anecdote of the family temperament, variously described

And there was another issue, one that usually went unspoken, but that loomed large nonetheless. For girls there was no question of becoming "lost"; they were rarely allowed to wander far. But a girl could still be ruined, in fact or in reputation; she could be ensnared in lafraa. Lafraa is translated, in my Gujarati–English dictionary, as "botherat

The Gujaratis of Fiji mostly kept apart from native people, except as business demanded. Many of my relatives say they were afraid at first of the tall, strong people who seemed as fierce as their historical reputation for cannibalism suggested. Natives and whites tended to see the Indians as clannish and separatist—but the Indians were in fact