Table of Contents
Arts, Mela & Cultural Education
Before government grants or foreign aid, Indo-Fijian schools were built on drama, music, and community spirit. Mela — the bazaars of plays, songs, and cultural performances — raised the funds. The arts gave Indo-Fijian children their first stages, their first books, and their first sense of heritage. In doing so, they made education possible and identity durable.
What is Mela?
Mela means “gathering” or “fair” in Indo-Fijian usage. It was a community festival — part bazaar, part drama, part concert — where every ticket sold, every curry plate, every raffle, and every performance contributed to school funds. Villagers came with coins in hand and left with pride in what those coins would build: desks, roofs, scholarships.
The heart of Mela was the arts. Ramayana mandali troupes staged plays; bhajan and qawwali groups sang into the night; poets recited verses in Hindi and Urdu. The creativity educated twice: it entertained and it financed.
“Our schools were not built by governments. They were built by harmoniums and dramas.”
Cultural Transmission Through Arts
For Girmitiya descendants cut off from India, the arts were survival. Mela staged epics that taught morality, identity, and resilience. A play about Ram’s exile became a metaphor for Indo-Fijians’ own displacement. Songs of Krishna and Meera infused children with a sense of belonging. Muslim troupes performed marsiyas (elegiac poetry) during Muharram,
teaching history and ethics.
Language preservation was crucial. Where schools lacked Hindi texts, dramas kept language alive in speech, rhyme, and humour. Youngsters learned vocabulary by acting out mythological roles; audiences learned cadence by listening. The stage was the classroom; the script the textbook.
Ramayana, Mahabharata, folk tales adapted for stage with local humour and music.
Bhajan, qawwali, dholak, harmonium and tabla woven into performance.
Curry, sweets, and chai sales provided steady revenue for schools.
Livestock, saris, or radios donated and raffled to raise funds.
The School Bazaar
Every Indo-Fijian village knew the rhythm of the school bazaar. Weeks of rehearsals, cooking, and set-building culminated in a two-day fair. Farmers donated produce, shopkeepers donated prizes, women fried pakoras by the bucket, and children practised lines backstage. When the curtain lifted, the audience laughed, cried, and paid — not grudgingly but joyfully, because the next classroom or scholarship depended on them.
These bazaars blurred boundaries: Hindus and Muslims, North Indians and South Indians, farmers and shopkeepers — all contributed. Education became the common language; the arts became the common treasury.
Case Study: The Ba Mela of 1954
In 1954, Ba’s Indo-Fijian community staged a grand Mela to raise money for a new secondary school. A Ramayana play ran three nights; a qawwali contest pitted local poets; stalls sold jalebis, samosas, and roti curry plates. Farmers donated sugarcane bundles for raffle, shopkeepers offered radios. By the end, the community raised enough to build the first classrooms of what became Ba Sangam College. The arts had literally built a school.
Teachers and Artists
Teachers often doubled as playwrights and organisers. A headmaster wrote scripts, pupils acted, staff played harmoniums. School committees printed programmes with advertisements from shops, creating a feedback loop: local business supported schools, schools produced educated clerks for business.
Some teachers went further, forming cultural troupes that toured the cane belt. These groups spread both art and literacy, raising funds for multiple schools. Many Indo-Fijian writers, poets, and musicians trace their first audience to a Mela stage under a tarpaulin roof.
Women at the Heart of Mela
Women were the logistical backbone. They sewed costumes, cooked food, ran ticket stalls, and trained children for dances. Their unpaid labour turned ideas into revenue. Mela offered them public roles that were respectable, tied to education, and celebrated by the community.
For many Indo-Fijian women, these events were also liberating. They stepped into management roles, handling money, negotiating suppliers, and mentoring students. The empowerment lasted beyond the bazaar — into PTA meetings, women’s wings of unions, and local politics.
First school bazaars staged; drama and music become tools for funding.
Mela becomes standard practice; faith groups institutionalise cultural shows.
Secondary schools expand; drama competitions and musical troupes flourish.
Migration reduces volunteer numbers, but remittances fund larger bazaars.
Decline and Continuity
By the late 20th century, government funding and international aid reduced reliance on bazaars. Migration also depleted the volunteer pool. Yet Mela survives as cultural festivals and alumni fundraisers. Old scripts are revived, bhajans still echo in halls, and raffle tickets still pass from hand to hand. The form changed, the spirit endured.
“The arts kept our language alive — and our schools open.”
Legacy of Arts in Education
Indo-Fijian education owes much to drums, harmoniums, and plays. The arts not only financed schools but transmitted identity. They ensured that a child in Ba or Labasa could recite verses in Hindi, sing bhajans, and feel pride in being Indo-Fijian while mastering English and arithmetic.
Mela built classrooms and communities. It turned art into infrastructure, culture into capital. Its legacy is seen in every Indo-Fijian school that still hosts an annual concert, every alumni group that raises funds with music, every parent who remembers how dramas built their first desk.