ABSTRACT
Postcolonial Indian writings in French have their roots in the history of colonization, the institution of indenture, and the pre-and post-capitalist plantation economies of the French-dominated islands of the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean. Kala pani narratives of indenture chronicle the historicity of French indenture and the experiences of indentured Indians. These writings also focus on the traumas, displacements, and anxieties of the post-indenture period, especially in terms of identity, positionality, and gender ideologies. Indo-Mauritian women writers in particular have received recent recognition for their work, which testifies to a growing interest in francophone Indo-Mauritian writing among French-speaking readers and critics. Coolitude finds an echo on the other side of the diasporic spectrum in Guadeloupe, where 42,326 Indians were forced to disembark between 1854 and 1889. Indo-Martinican author Camille Moutoussamy claims his Indian heritage as a "plantation coolie", which could also be classified as a kala pani text of crossing.
