Kalpana Hiralal

Kalpana Hiralal teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology at UKZN.

In her chapter,The Gujarati trading class within the Indian Community – Shaped and styled by historical contradictions, Kalpana provides a richly nuanced historical account of the people who migrated from India to South Africa. She assesses how differentiated they were in terms of income, wealth and social class. And she investigates the different motivations and experiences of these groups. Kalpana addresses gender differences in migration and participation in the economy. She shows how these historical differences are of contemporary relevance: ‘the difference in origin between the ‘indentured’ – labouring – and the passenger trading class’ provides ‘a basis of an enduring social distinction of great importance in understanding the Indian community in Natal’.

Reference:
Hiralal, Kalpana. 'The Gujarati trading class within the Indian Community – Shaped and styled by historical contradictions', in Rob Pattman and Sultan Khan (Eds.), Undressing Durban (Durban: Madiba Press, 2007), pp. 309-315.