OMAN-INDIA TIES, ACROSS SEA AND SPACE

Women in the Indian diaspora in Oman Research into the historical Indian merchant families often provides a plethora of information and archival data, usually in the form of photographs and accounts, much of which deals with life in the public domain – trading records, logbooks of ships and custom stamps and narratives of bombings of British ships in the Bay of Sidab. Unsurprisingly, all of these clearly exclude the role of women who were often mentioned as an integral part of the community, always present in the background but rarely given a role, or even a voice in the narrative. This is an important gap in the research on the Indian families living in Oman for the last 300 years or more. Conversing with older women in the families reveals a fascinating narrative of travel, of memories and home, of attempts at creating homes away from home and an unquestionable determination to remain in the margins of the narrative, supporting efforts at economic development and retaining the symbolic representations of home66. Some of these individual stories were narrated by family members in informal conversations.

Born in 1914 in Lathi, Gujarat, Shanta Naraindas Toprani came to Muscat in 1933 following her marriage to Naraindas. With very little Gujarati and basic maths, Shantadevi soon learnt about the family business and, by 1940, she was already looking over all the book keeping and documented communications of N.P.Toprani & Co. From 1961 onwards, Shantadevi was made the legal proprietor and, following the death of Naraindas in 1964, she become the sole owner of all the assets left by Naraindas. She was widely known by everybody in the community, often feeding traditional Gujarati meals to guests who included Omani and Indian businessmen. In 2008, she was the oldest woman to be granted Omani citizenship as she was 93 years.

She died in 2018.

Hemlataben, too, came to Muscat upon her marriage to one of the sons of Keshavji Purshottam. She came in ‘The Dwarka’, one of the two ships, which traversed the Arabian coast between Mandvi and Muscat – the other being ‘The Damra’. In 1971, she came to live near the Muttrah Bay, close to the trading posts and the sea. The larger Dhanji Morarji family of more than 30 members lived and cooked together near the royal clinic, opposite the royal palace in Muscat. The male servants would bring water from the well in Muttrah and Ruwi. Women were not allowed to venture outside, except in the evenings when they would go out with their husbands and other family members. Outings consisted of picnics at the Sal Mala (the present PDO road), which was the only well-kept garden in the city at that time. Hemlataben 66 For more details of home making strategies and gendering the women of the Indian diaspora in Oman, see S. R. Mehta, (2012). ‘Creating identities: Oral narratives of Gujarati women in Oman’.

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