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Navi Pillay wins Nobel Peace Prize: Her grandparents were Indian indentured labourers
The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Indian-origin Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
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The 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Indian-origin Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law. A South African jurist and former International Criminal Court judge, Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.
"A common thread runs from her early work defending Nelson Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time," the committee said.
Navi Pillay and her India connection
Navi Pillay, 85, is a South African of Indian Tamil origin who was the first non-white woman to be appointed judge of the High Court of South Africa.
Her family history goes back to the arrival of Indian indentured labourers in the country during British colonial rule. According to the book Navi Pillay: Realising Human Rights for All by Sam Naidu, Pillay is the granddaughter of Indian indentured servants who migrated to South Africa in the 1890s.
Born in 1941 in Natal province, Pillay was the fifth of eight children of Narrainsamy Naidoo and Santhama Naidoo. Her grandparents had travelled from India to work on sugar plantations in Natal. Her parents married in their early teens in an arranged marriage.
While her father worked as a bus driver and took up other jobs, including fishing, to supplement the family's income, her mother was a homemaker.
Overview of Indian labourers in South Africa
The arrival of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa dates back to the 19th century, when the country was under British colonial rule. After slavery was abolished across British territories in 1833, plantation owners faced a shortage of labour. British authorities turned to the indentured labour system, under which workers from India were recruited to work in British colonies, particularly on sugarcane plantations.
(Also read: Indians brought prosperity with them to South Africa)
To fill this void, British authorities established the Indentured Labour System — a contractual workforce arrangement where workers from India were transported to British colonies around the world and made to work in the labour-heavy agricultural sector, particularly sugarcane plantations.
Between 1860 and 1911, roughly 150,000 Indian workers migrated to the British colony of Natal in South Africa under this system. Recruited mainly from regions like Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat, these individuals were enticed by recruiters promising reliable wages.
However, the reality on the plantations was brutal and closely mirrored the conditions of slavery.
Workers were subjected to long, exhausting hours, physical violence like flogging, imprisonment, squalid living quarters, and the denial of basic food rations.
The colonial legal structure was built entirely to protect white landowners, leaving labourers with no legal recourse against mistreatment.
Pillay's family history reflects this difficult past. According to Navi Pillay: Realising Human Rights for All, she has often spoken about her grandparents' journey across the kala pani and the horrific conditions they endured in South Africa. She has described them as an inspiration and calls herself the “voice of victims everywhere”.
